Pressing Play (Rewind and Repeat)
by SereneCalamity
Summary: A second series of song inspired oneshots, featuring around our favourite couples. Requests now closed. Mainly Clace, with Malec and Sizzy.
1. A: All Of Me

_Hey, guys! Alright, this is the new_ Pressing Play _that I promised was coming, quite a while ago! I've finally got it up! Hope you guys enjoy :)_

 _Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters or any of the songs._

 **A : _All Of Me_ \- John Legend  
** **Requested by _Juls2820_ _, xTheMorningStarx_ and _bunnyoruga_**

 _My head's under water  
_ _But I'm breathing fine  
_ _You're crazy and I'm out of my mind_

 _'Cause all of me  
_ _Loves all of you  
_ _Love your curves and all your edges  
_ _All your perfect imperfections  
_ _Give your all to me  
_ _I'll give my all to you  
_ _You're my end and my beginning  
_ _Even when I lose I'm winning  
_ _'Cause I give you all of me  
_ _And you give me all of you, oh oh_

Jace Herondale chewed down on the end of the pencil that he had been scribbling with for hours now. He had lost track of how many hours he had been sitting in the large room, although the sun was already beginning to sink in the sky, so it was probably late afternoon now. The sun was filling the room, the wooden floors a rich mahogany and the high ceiling a glowing golden. There were book cases overflowing with music books at one end of the room, and a long table along another side, with pencils and pens and books half filled with lyrics and unfinished piano music.

He pulled the pencil out of his mouth, scribbling a few more notes down on the paper and then tossing the pencil down on the music rack of the classic grand piano that was one of loves of his life. His fingers glided over the ivory keys of the piano, the music lilting, filling the room and making him smile. The few more bars that he had written in sounded good—the sounded close to perfect with the lyrics that he had written earlier.

" _How many times do I have to tell you...Even when you're crying, you're beautiful too_ ," Jace's eyes drifted over to a picture that was framed on top of the black piano. He pursed his lips together, his fingers running over a few more keys, wincing as he hit a note that didn't sound quite right. He started again, taking it from the beginning of the second verse that he had just started constructing. This time through, the music flowed and he began singing softly, under his breath, the words tattooed into his brain after the amount of times that he had gone over them today, tweaking the words in the verses until it flowed. " _You're my downfall, you're my muse...My worst distraction, my rhythm and blues_ ," a gentle smile spread across his face, happy with the way that the verse finally sounded.

The song had been started two days ago, and he had slowly been piecing things together. Sometimes it happened like that; Jace heard the music in his head and the lyrics were filling his heart, and they all became this mess as he tried to get it all onto paper. Other times it was a struggle, and he didn't really know how to make heads or tails or even where to start with a song. This time, it had been one that he been writing easily, his mind jumping between the verses and the bridge and the chorus, and he almost had it all together.

There was loud laughing, and Jace's head turned toward the glass wall that was facing the back yard of their sprawling Los Angeles home. There was a small row of windows along the top of the glass walls which were open, and he could hear the sound of laughing travelling over the late afternoon breeze. His fingers dropped from the ivory keys, getting up from the piano seat and walking over to the windows.

Carter and Natasha Herondale—his seven year old twins. They had blonde hair that just got more and more golden, the closer they got to summer, and matching glowing green eyes.

He was only twenty-six years old, his high school girlfriend had gotten pregnant in their last year of high school, and his promising career that he had worked for his whole life—his music, his piano playing, his singing, his song writing—felt a though it was all going to be flushed down the drain. He had gotten into Julliard early admission, and his teachers all said that he had a promising career in front of him, but with his girlfriend pregnant, he considered dropping out. His parents had been furious, threatened to cut him off if he didn't have her 'take care of it', but he couldn't ask that of her—couldn't face that _himself_.

In the end, his grandmother, Imogen Herondale, had intervened. She had told the young expecting parents to move in with her, and had helped out as much as she could. Carter and Natasha had been born happy and healthy, Jace had finished his schooling, he had now released two successful albums, and more importantly he could provide for his family, and they were _still_ happy and healthy.

Jace moved back to his piano, not bothering to sit down as he picked up his pencil and tattered notebook, scribbling down a few more lines. He was humming, the final part of the song feeling as though it was coming together.

" _Cards on the table, we're both showing hearts. Risking it all, though it's hard_ ," Jace was too swept up in the song, moving to stand in front of the piano to run one hand over the keys in the final chorus. He was so wrapped up in the song, at the final piece of the song coming together that he didn't hear tentative footsteps on the wooden floors in the hallway outside the room, or the heavier footsteps behind them. " _Cause all of me, loves all of you...All your curves and all your edges, all your perfect imperfections..._ " there was quiet giggling, and Jace's fingers faltered over the keys, looking toward the open door of the room.

"Sounds like your daddy has another winner on his hands," Clarissa Herondale murmured, a proud, intimate smile on her face as she looked up from their youngest child, nine month old Jocelyn Herondale. Jocelyn was just learning to walk, and she was gripping firmly to Clary's fingers and there was a wide, gummy smile on her face as she looked up at her daddy. They approached Jace, taking it at Jocelyn's pace, one little foot in front of the other, a bit hesitant, holding on tightly to Clary's hands that were on either side of her, her mother bent forward so that she could support her daughter.

Jace's eyes drifted up from his daughter to Clary. She had been his best friend since he was seven, his girlfriend since he was sixteen, and his wife since he was twenty-three. She was the most loving, caring, strong person he knew, and she stood by his side through everything, even when they were broke, and she was pregnant, and it looked as though everything was going to fall apart around them. She believed in him steadfastly, she was an incredible mother, and she was his inspiration every single day to be the best person—and most importantly, the best _father_ —that he could be.

"Dadda," Jocelyn gurgled, and Jace grinned reaching down to pick up Jocelyn, Clary moving to stand beside Jace, taking his notebook out of his hands.

"You're my end and my beginning. Even when I loose I'm winning," she read, her smile stretching across her face. "It sounds beautiful." Jace slipped the arm that wasn't holding Jocelyn around Clary's shoulders, tucking her in tightly against his side. He could hear loud footsteps and happy shouts as Carter and Natasha came into the house, and it sounded as though they were quickly approaching his music room.

It was everything he needed.

 _They_ were everything he ever needed.

 _Let me know what you think xx_


	2. B: Bad Things

**Hey, my beautiful, wonderful readers! It's early February, so as promised, here's an update! I hope you guys have had an amazing past few months, and I hope you're still interested in these stories! Just a quick heads up that I've uploaded some oneshots, and I do still have a couple to post, but I had so many requests to update my multi-chapters, so I thought I would update these before continuing with my editing, so there are some more to come!**

 **Anyway, here we go...**

 **B : _Bad Things_ \- Machine Gun Kelly feat. Camila Cabello  
** **Requested by _AFourAddict_**

 _Am I out of my head?  
_ _Am I out of my mind?  
_ _If you only knew the bad things I like  
_ _Don't think that I can explain it  
_ _What can I say, it's complicated  
_ _Don't matter what you say  
_ _Don't matter what you do  
_ _I only wanna do bad things to you  
_ _So good, that you can't explain it  
_ _What can I say, it's complicated_

Clarissa Morgenstern pursed her lips as she looked across the conference hall to where the Herondales were standing. After a few moments, her eyes slid to the side to look at a group of old men, who were muttering among themselves, grumpy expressions fixed on their faces as they stood, looking pompous in their thousand dollar suits that somehow still managed to look ill-fitting. Her eyes shifted again, finding her father, Valentine Morgenstern, speaking with a couple of colleagues, a wide smile on his face, gesturing widely with his arms. He was making a big show, demanding attention, just like he did whenever he was in a court room—it was what made him so effective. She sighed and looked down at the whiskey tumbler in her hand, tapping her finger against the glass.

She was pretty sure if she decided to watch paint dry she would be more entertained.

It wasn't that she didn't like her career—she absolutely loved it.

Clary loved being a lawyer, she was good at what she did and, okay, so maybe she sometimes got a bit more emotionally involved with some of her clients than she really should, but she was still young. She was twenty-six, and had only been with the firm for a year and a half, but because of her family connections, she was managing to work her way up the ladder quickly.

But she hated _this_.

The politics of it all.

Her father ran one of the largest law firms in the country, alongside his business partner, Hodge Starkweather. Twice a year these seminars happened, where firms from around the country would come together, moving from one conference room to the next over the week, all meeting together in the lobby and bar of the expensive hotel. Clary would watch her father bounce from one group of lawyers to the next, picking up on any little bit of information he could that would benefit his firm and give him leverage against others, or even poaching top ranking lawyers from other firms.

The red head sighed, smoothing her hand over the tight, pencil cut skirt that she was wearing and tipped her head back as she drained the rest of the whiskey in her glass. She put it back down on the bar, quickly getting swooped up by one of the bartenders and offered another one. Clary shook her head, moving away from the bar with, her heels clicking on the varnished floors. She reached the elevator and waited impatiently for it to reach the ground floor. When the doors finally slid open with a loud ' _ding_ ', Clary glanced over her shoulder, her green eyes finding a pair of golden ones across the lobby. He was staring directly at her, and as she got into the elevator and the doors began sliding closed again, she saw him start to excuse himself from the group of lawyers he was speaking with.

Her room was on the sixteenth floor, and the elevator moved up silently, stopping when it finally got to her floor. She pulled at the clip that was holding her hair back in a low chignon at the nape of her neck, and her dark red hair fell down, around her shoulders. As she approached her room, she pulled her keycard out of her purse, slipping it into the slot and then stepping inside the room. She had just turned on the light, and the door was almost completely shut when there was a quiet thud, and she looked over her shoulder to see a hand curled around the door, stopping it from shutting.

Clary swallowed hard as the gorgeous golden haired man from downstairs, wearing an expensive tuxedo and a tie that had been slightly loosened around his neck, stepped into the room. There was a glint in his eye that made Clary's stomach clench and she opened her mouth to say something, but then he stepped toward her, kicking the door shut behind him as he reached out to gripped her hair.

" _Shit_ ," Clary squeaked as his fingers wrapped around her hair tightly, pulling her in close so that their mouths meet with an awkward click of her teeth as she tried to keep up with the ferocious pace he set straight away. There was a prick at her scalp as he pulled her hair, right from the roots, and she grabbed onto his suit jacket to keep her balance in the high heels she was wearing.

"Fuck, you're beautiful," Jace growled as his mouth shifted from her lips, biting lightly at her jaw and down her neck, to her collarbone. The tailored jacket she was wearing over the dark purple blouse was open necked, exposing her collarbone and a hint of her cleavage, but from the way Jace was sucking and biting at her neck and chest, she was guessing for the last day of the conference tomorrow, she was going to need to wear something that would cover her up a bit more.

Jace's mouth mets hers once more, biting at her lips, and she bit back, feeling the metallic burst of blood in her mouth. There was a grunt from Jace as he drew away from her, leaning down to tug her tight skirt up around her waist, revealing the green silk thong that she was wearing. With one harsh, the flimsy material was ripped and thrown to the side, and he pushed her toward the large windows on the other side of the room.

"Do you know how fucking hard it is?" Jace muttered as he loosened his belt, not even bothering to pull his pants down as he tugged himself out, pumping his hand around his cock a few times. Clary whimpered as she made out his reflection in the windows she was facing, and then his hands were on her bare waist. "Watching you across the room from me— _being right there_ —and not even being able to look at your properly?" His fingers curled into the skin stretched over hips, his blunt nails pressing half moon crescents into the pale canvas. "Not being able to _touch_ you?"

Clary groaned as she was pressed hard against the cold glass, looking out over the New York city skyline in front of her but not really taking it in. Jace reached around her slim torso, groping at her breasts for a moment before he pushed into her.

" _Jace_!" Clary gasped out, turning her head to the side so that her cheek was pressed to the glass. Her hair was a mess, and she didn't doubt for a second that her lipstick was smeared across her mouth. Jace was still practically fully clothed, and apart from being stripped of her underwear and her skirt being hiked up, so was Clary, but she could feel the heat from his skin through the layers of clothes. He bit into her neck, his tongue flicking over the pulse point, sucking at the skin as she moaned and writhed between Jace and the window, barely able to keep her balance in the high heels that she was in.

Jace didn't pull out when he came, but that was something that they had talked about.

If she got pregnant, that would just bring their timeline forward a little.

"Shit," Clary sighed, sagging against the window. Jace braced his hands on the glass beside her head, taking in a couple of deep breaths as he rested his forehead against her shoulder. After he caught his breath, he looped an arm around her waist and half dragged, half carried her back to the hotel bed. He rolled her over, so that she was laying on her back, and he stared down at her, tucking a stray strand of red hair behind her ear.

"I'm being serious," Jace murmured.

"About what?" Clary sounded tired as she snuggled into his side.

"Seeing you—being in the same room as you—and not being able to speak to you," Jace sighed as he pressed a soft kiss to the tip of her nose.

"Not much longer now," Clary was falling asleep, despite the fact that they hadn't cleaned up and she was still dressed. "And then it's just us...Us against the world."

"Not much longer," Jace repeated back to her, almost completely covering her with his body as he wrapped her in a tight hug.

 **Right! So, here's the super, super long A/N—sorry! I had a great Christmas and New Years time, not really doing much, just spending time at the beach and with my husband and with some of best friends. This year has started well, there's been a few bad days, but hey, happens to everyone. I hope your year has started just as good, and you spent it with family and friends if that's what you prefer, and that you spent it alone and quiet if that's what you prefer.**

 **I wanted to say that I managed to get around to most of peoples oneshots, at least the ones that struck a chord with me because some of prompts just aren't the type that I can write, and I had fun with the ones I wrote! You can still send me prompts or requests through the year, and I try and get to them near the end of the year when I focus on oneshots. Can be in a huge variety of fandoms, just ask me :)**

 **On with the recommendations!**

 **TV Shows: _Roswell: New Mexico_. Well. I loooved the original series, even if I can see a lot of flaws in it when watching it now back to when I was a teenager. I'm enjoying the reboot so far, I really like the change up in Liz, and Michael's relationship with Alex. I love that Tyler Blackburn from Pretty Little Liars is in it, and Michael Trevino from Vampire Diaries, because he was one of my favourite characters from VD. Anyway. Fingers crossed it goes well. And I intensely ship Max/Liz already, and not because I know they're supposed to get together, but because I love their chemistry, which is more than the original series, at least for my side. Oh and _The Runaways_ Season 2! I liked Gert a lot more in this one. Ooh, and _Sex Education_. That show is absolutely brilliant. Like, insanely brilliant. I'm so glad it's been renewed for another season. I also started watching _The Following_ for the hundredth time because this show is amazing.**

 **Music: _6 Figures_ by Kings, _Run Away With Me_ by Carly Rae Jepsen, _Old News_ by Mitch James, _Wasted_ by Jesse McCartney and _Bad_! by XXXTENTACION. Ooh, and _Saturday Nights_ by Khalid, _Bury A Friend_ by Billie Eilish and _Wild Enough_ by Elina.**

 **Movies: _Tomb Raider_ , which I watched for the second time the other week and I quite enjoyed it, a lot more than the first time I watched it. Alicia Vikander is a babe. Also _How To Train Your Dragon 3_. Holy shit. I knew this one was going to get me in the feels, but I didn't expect to cry twice. It was beautiful. Also the new _Robin Hood._ Maybe I'm biased because I love Taron Egerton, but I didn't think it was anywhere near as bad as what the reviews said. I know it wasn't great, but I still enjoyed it, and Marian was a badass.**

 **Now, I've got some questions! Thought I'd change things up a little this year.**

 **So; what is your favourite song right now? Mine would be a tie between _Run Away With Me_ by Carley Rae Jepsen and _Back To Life_ by Hailee Steinfield.**

 **What is...Your favourite movie that you've seen recently? Mine would be _Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse_.**

 **Aaaand what is your favourite fandom to read in? For me it would be a tie between the DC fandom and _Harry Potter_ right now, although it changes frequently.**

 **Talk to me, let me know what you thought and answer the questions if you feel inclined to!**


	3. C: Castle On The Hill

**C : _Castle on a Hill_ \- Ed Sheeran**  
 **Requested by _Yumna_**

 _We found weekend jobs, when we got paid  
_ _We'd buy cheap spirits and drink them straight  
_ _Me and my friends have not thrown up in so long  
_ _Oh, how we've grown  
_ _But I can't wait to go home_

 _I'm on my way  
_ _Driving at 90 down those country lanes  
_ _Singing to "Tiny Dancer"  
_ _And I miss the way  
_ _You make me feel  
_ _And it's real  
_ _We watched the sunset over the castle on the hill  
_ _Over the castle on the hill  
_ _Over the castle on the hill_

Clarissa Fray could feel the excitement building in her stomach building as the train sped further into the countryside. They had been travelling for nearly two hours now, and she only had twenty minutes left until they were meant to be pulling into the station in Idris. The station was a whole lot smaller than the one in New York where she left—although her mother had told her it had gotten a face lift in the past year. She remembered when she was sixteen, and Jocelyn Garroway had finally let her take the train into the city with her friends, without any of their parents coming along with them. It had been so exciting, getting on the train, going into the city, and getting completely lost and having to find their way back frantically before the final train went back to their small town.

Clary pulled her phone out of her pocket and looked down at her phone, not too surprised when she saw she had no reception. It had been a big deal a few years ago when wifi had actually become available, given how secluded her home town was.

It had been almost two years since she had been back to Idris, given how busy her life was in the city with her job, moving up the ladder at her advertising firm. But two of her closest friends—one of whom she had been friend with since she was in diapers, Simon Lewis—were getting married, and they had decided to get married back where they had grown up. Most people were already back in Idris, but she had needed to get a later train because she had a last minute meeting.

It was going to be a good week.

Back home, surrounded with the memories of her childhood—the good, the bad, the ugly.

Clary only had one suitcase with her as she got off the train, and she saw her mother and step-father, Luke Garroway, waiting for her.

"Mum! Dad!" She called out, and then her older brother, Jonathon Fray, also appeared and she laughed as he ran out to meet her. Jocelyn and Luke joined her as well, giving her a tight hug, Luke managing to fit his arm around all three of them.

"Alright, let's get you in the car and I'll drop you off at the inn after," Jocelyn said as she smushed a kiss against Clary's cheek, leaving a smear of lipstick. Clary nodded, Jon taking her bag while the two woman walked off in front of the men.

The town looked barely any different than when she had been growing up, apart from a couple new stores, and some new paint slapped on. The ice cream store where her and Isabelle Lightwood had worked at was now blue and white, rather than the pink and purple that it had been when she was a teenager. Clary couldn't hold back her grin as she saw the big, loopy writing on the chalkboard outside—it still must be ol' Ms Branwell running the place, because she would recognize that writing anywhere. Within half a minute of driving, they were already through the township, and Clary was glad that although there had been a three new stores added, and there was some upkeep done to the original ones, it hadn't grown much larger than that.

"We picked Maia and Bat up a few hours ago from the train station as well," Jocelyn told Clary from the front seat. "Izzy was meant to pick them up, but I think that all the wedding stress is getting on top of her."

"And by that, you mean all the _Maryse_ stress is getting on top of her," Luke muttered under his breath and Clary and Jon exchanged grins. Maryse Lightwood and Luke didn't have the best history, part of it stemming from the fact that she was a defense attorney and Luke was a police officer, but most of it stemming from their difference in personalities and parenting styles. But they tolerated each other, given Jocelyn and Maryse's close friendship, as well as that of their children.

Jocelyn and Luke pulled up outside the Alicante Inn, where Simon and Isabelle's wedding was going to be, and both Clary and Jon got out. Jocelyn and Luke would be taking her bags back to their house because she was going to be staying there over the long weekend, but right now, Clary just wanted to see her friends.

The inn was a mess when they got in, and Jon took one look around, spotted Sebastian Verlac, who was the football quarterback when they were in high school, and immediately disappeared toward the bar. All Clary had to do was follow the sound of high pitched voices, and winced as she got the end room and found Isabelle standing there, facing off with her mother, a veil in Maryse's hand and a tiara in Isabelle's. Alec Lightwood and Jace Herondale were standing in the middle of the room, looking out of place in the baby blue and cream room, dark purple bridesmaids dresses hanging from one curtain rail and tuxedo's hanging from another, and Magnus was sitting in an arm chair in the corner of the room, a bored expression on his face.

Jace looked relieved to see Clary but Magnus was already jumping up to save the day, interrupting Maryse's tirade about how Isabelle should choose veil because it was the traditional option, whereas Isabelle just snapped that she wanted to where a tiara coz she was going to look like a _fucking princess_ on her wedding day. Magnus wrapped a tight arm around Maryse's waist and practically propelled her from the room, letting Isabelle breathe again.

"Hey," Clary tilted her head to the side, a glint in her eye. "You guys want to head up to the castle?"

"We _can't_ ," Isabelle sighed, looking down at the beloved tiara in her hand. "We still have to re-organize the seating chart, because mum and dad just had _another_ fight, and don't want to be near each other, and coz Maia's brought Bat, we have to find somewhere to put Jordan on the other side of the room. And then we just had a call from the caterer, and one of the waitresses broke her ankle doing ice hockey or something, and so—" she looked like she was about to start hyperventilating and Alec quickly rushed over to her, taking the tiara from her hand and breathing in and out in an exaggerated fashion, trying to get her to calm down.

"Alright!" Magnus appeared back in the doorway, and he was holding three bottles of wine tightly in his arms. "We need to get of here _now_ , I think that all of us can do with a bit of a reprieve." He arched an eyebrow and tilted his head toward Isabelle. "Especially you, biscuit," he stated.

"I—" Isabelle looked torn, but Alec put down the tiara and circled her hand around her wrist, while Jace picked up his jacket and pulled his phone out of his pocket.

"I'll ring Simon, and tell him to meet us there," he said.

"Right, we're set!" Magnus announced. "Let's go!"

It was only a five minute drive to get to the castle, more commonly known as the golf club of their town—it only really talk five minutes to get _anywhere_ in their hometown—and Alec parked the car on the side of the road, around the corner from the official car park of the club. It wasn't the golf club itself that they were going to, it was an old shed on a hill that overlooked the golf courses. It used to be used as a maintenance shed, until they built a much bigger one in the centre of the course, and now it was just abandoned. It had been abandoned over ten years ago, and in their last two years of high school, they had all started coming up here, to get away from their parents, to get drunk and spin shit. Somewhere along their high school years, they had nicknamed the little shed 'the castle', perched on top of a hill that looked over their small township.

It was where Jace and Clary had their first kiss.

It was also where Alec had admitted to his friends that he was gay.

Magnus hadn't been in high school with them, but a year after he and Alec were together, he came back to spend Christmas with the Lightwoods, and Alec showed him their hide out. It was a little dusty, since it hadn't been opened in years, and Alec had been surprised that it hadn't been used by the next generation of high school students.

"There's the groom," Magnus announced as they got out of Alec's SUV and saw a white Toyota approaching. Simon pulled up behind the parked car and got out, looking a little disheveled, his eyes tired behind his glasses.

"Eesh," Clary grumbled sympathetically. "It looks as though you could use a whole bottle to yourself." She grabbed one of the bottles of wine from the back seat and quickly passed it over to Simon.

"Maryse cornered me, and said she couldn't find Izzy," he muttered as wrapped his fingers around the lid of the bottle. "Wouldn't let me go until I promised to find her. Technically I wasn't lying to my future mother-in-law," he managed to get the lid off, and swallowed a few gulps. Jace raised his eyebrows at Clary who made a face.

"Come on," he stated. "Let's head up." She smiled at him, and reached up on her tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek as he circled an arm around her waist.

They had had a bit of a difficult run, since leaving high school, but it had worked out for the best in the end. They had gotten together in the second to last year of high school, even though Clary was a bit of a nerd and her and Simon preferred to spend their lunch breaks in the library and Jace was all about football. But they had made it work, until graduation, when they had gone their separate ways. They had managed to stay together for almost a year, with Clary studying in New York and Jace in Boston, but then distance had pulled them apart.

Two years ago, they had found their way back together, and were now living in New York together, solid and secure in their relationship.

It was unlike Simon and Isabelle, who had managed to stay together steadily for the past eight years, and were now getting ready to tie the knot.

"Shit," Alec let out a huff as they reached the top of the hill, Isabelle slipping a few times on the uneven surface and Magnus nearly going for a tumble as he tried to keep a grip on the wine bottles he was carrying. Alec reached out to steady Magnus, and then he turned to look out over the golf course, and then lift his eyes further, toward their town.

"You remember when we broke into ol' Starkweathers office? Undone all the screws in his chair except for one, so that when he sat down it totally collapsed?" Jace asked with a grin as he slung his arm around Clary's shoulder as the six of them all turned to look out over the town, their little rundown castle behind them, looking almost picturesque in the light yellows and oranges that were being cast over the hill from the setting sun.

"Somehow I managed to take all the blame for that, and I had detention for a week," Alec glared half-heartedly at his best friend who just grinned. Magnus handed one of the bottles of wine to Clary, and then started unscrewing the lid of the one he was left holding. Simon was almost halfway through his bottle, and Isabelle shook her head and smiled as she reached out to take it from him.

"Sharing is caring," she informed her soon-to-be husband and he reluctantly handed it over.

"I remember having to carry you all the way back into town when you rolled your ankle climbing down this hill. _That_ was pretty caring," Simon pointed out, and Isabelle tipped her head to the side, her long hair falling over her shoulder as she smiled charmingly up at him.

"You've always been my knight in shining armour," Isabelle snuggled in close to his side as she drank from the wine bottle. Simon scoffed as he took the wine back and drank from from it.

"And you've always been my princess," Simon responded, sounding sickly sweet as he hugged her tightly. "Which is why you're _gonna_ wear that tiara on our wedding day."

"Hell yes you are," Clary agreed with a cheer and a laugh. They fell quiet for a few moments, passing the wine bottle between them, looking down at the town, watching the sun sink even further in the sky. "Remember that after party in our last year of school? Getting drunk and ending up in the pool at Kaelie's?"

"Stuck up bitch," Isabelle rolled her eyes. "She was always trying to get in your pants," she waved her hand at Alec who made a face.

"At least she had a pool, there was a massive drought that summer, so that was amazing to spend the night in her parents pool," Alec reminded them, and there was a hum of agreement.

"I don't remember the pool," Jace's voice was soft in Clary's ear, his breath warm on her cheek, intimate. "But I remember your parents empty house later that night."

"You're not speaking as quietly as you think you are," Magnus sung out, and Jace pulled the fingers at him, and Magnus—ever the mature one—poked out his tongue in response. "Well, I may not have the high school memories you lot had, but Alexander did all sorts of things to me in your castle over there since we've been together," he jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the abandoned shed behind them.

"Ew!"

"Mags!"

"That's my _brother_!"

Laughs rang out between the six and Clary took in a deep breath as she looked at her group of friends—at the people she had grown up with, that she had shared so much of her life with—and then at their little castle on the hill, which had also shared a lot of memories in her life. She smiled, feeling completely satisfied in that moment.

 **I've written this about four times now, and I'm just going to keep it simple.**

 **On the 15th of March 2019, there was a terrorist attack in my beautiful country, New Zealand. This is the first ever mass shooting on this level during peace time in the beautiful islands that I have spent my whole life in.**

 **This doesn't happen here. We don't have mass shootings. We don't have a fear of one another to the point where it drums up anger that turns to hate.** **In the words of our absolutely incredible Prime Minister, " _They are us_."**

 **We are all one people, and we can't let hate win.**

 **I hope you all spend time with people that you love and cherish, and I hope you never hold back to show this.**

 **Arohanui and Kia Kaha x**


	4. D: Delicate

**So I know this song is a lot more, uh, ha** — _ **delicate**_ **that what the situations in these story seem to portray, but when I wrote it, I wasn't in too much of a fluffy mood, which is why their circumstances are a bit rougher than probably expected.**

 **D : _Delicate_ \- Taylor Swift  
Requested by _colorinfestation_ and _Juls2820_**

 _Is it cool that I said all that?  
_ _Is it chill that you're in my head?  
_ _'Cause I know that it's delicate (delicate)  
_ _Is it cool that I said all that?  
_ _Is it too soon to do this yet?  
_ _'Cause I know that it's delicate  
_ _Isn't it? Isn't it? Isn't it? Isn't it?  
_ _Isn't it? Isn't it? Isn't it?  
_ _Isn't it... delicate?_

Clarissa Morgenstern clenched her teeth together as she heard another two gunshots fire off and she glanced across the doorway to where Robert Lightwood was standing. He stared at her for a beat before holding up two fingers, and then jabbing his thumb inwards, to where the gunshots were coming from. She felt the warmth at her back and she knew that Alexander Lightwood was right there behind her. She heard a groan from inside and it made her stomach flip, but she waited until the signal from their sergeant, and then her and Alec burst into the room with their weapons raised.

The drug dealers that they were facing off against began shouting and reloading their guns, firing off at the two police officers, but then Maia Roberts and Bat Velasquez came bursting through the doors on the other side. Two of them were shot to the point where they ended up on the ground—one of them looked dead—but the other one stopped as soon as Maia put the butt of her gun to the back of his head.

"Cuff them!" Robert shouted from where he had come into the room and immediately kneeled next to where Jace Wayland was lying on the ground. He'd been shot at a weird angle, and so the bullet had managed to skid underneath the bulletproof vest that he was wearing and buried itself into his shoulder. That wouldn't have been enough to take him down if that was by itself, but when he had jerked in response to getting shot, he was also hit in the thigh. "This is Lightwood," he began into his comm unit. "I need an ambulance dispatched to my location! We've got an officer and two suspects down! I repeat, we have an officer down!"

Clary tried not to get distracted from where she was rolling one of the fallen drug dealers onto his stomach, not caring as he swore under his breath as she jerked up his arms behind his back, smearing the blood that was pouring out of his arm onto the dusty concrete floor. She glanced back over at Jace as Robert helped him to his feet, leaning heavily against their sergeant, and then she was jerking the dealer up and stomping him out of the warehouse.

* * *

It was getting close to ten that evening before Clary was finished at the station. Alec had gone with Jace to the hospital, even though their squad member had just rolled his eyes and said he would be fine and he didn't need an escort, and when he had come back to the station he had said that Jace would be fine, just as he predicted. The bullet to the shoulder had been a through and through, so that would heal with time and some physio, and the bullet to his thigh was just a graze, although it was a graze that managed to take a good chunk of the side of his leg. Clary went to the front desk where the nurse began to tell her that visiting hours were over when she held up her shield. The nurse told her the room that Jace was in and she stalked toward the elevators.

She probably looked terrible, but that was pretty standard after working for nearly forty-eight hours. Her hair was pulled up in a messy ponytail and that was falling out around her face, and she had taken a few minutes to change out of the green and black shirt that she had been wearing when they had stormed into the warehouse. She had gotten blood on her shirt from their suspect when she and Robert had been interrogating him.

Maybe she had gotten a little worked up about her partner being shot, and it wasn't as though Robert was going to stop her as she pressed her finger into the mans bullet wound, because it was his team member that had been taken away in an ambulance.

So she had needed to change her shirt, and she spritzed a little perfume because she hadn't showered in two days now, and then she had headed over to the hospital with her oversized bag thrown over her shoulder. Clary got out of the elevator and headed toward the room near the end of the hallway. Before turning the door into the room, she took in a deep breath.

Jace was going to be okay.

Jace had only suffered clean bullet shots.

Jace would be pissed if she fawned over him.

So she shook out her arms, rolled her eyes at how nervous she was and how worried she was, and stalked into the hospital room.

It was easy to find Jace in the room, even though there were six hospital beds, because he was the one in the end bed, sitting up straight with an absolutely fed up expression on his face as he stared up at the TV in the corner of the room. His jaw was clenched and Clary had to smother her amused smile as she saw that all he seemed to be wearing was the flimsy hospital robe. She walked past the other occupants in the room and Jace's eyes moved to hers, widening as he saw her.

"You look so fucking good right now, it's like I'm imagining you," he stated and Clary snorted, shaking her head.

"I know for a fact you're full of shit," she replied as she came over to where he was sitting up in the bed. "I look fucking terrible."

"Please tell me that you're here to break me out of here," Jace made a face. "They want to keep me in overnight because they want to make sure I don't have a concussion." Clary knew that already, given Alec had been on the phone with Jace earlier, and that was why she was here.

"Well, I can always keep an eye on you," Clary smirked at him and Jace's grin grew.

"You wouldn't happen to have any clothes for me in there, would you?" He looked hopefully at her bag. "I don't want to leave in this shit." Clary didn't say anything as she pulled her bag off her shoulder and put it down on the side of the bed. Jace tugged it open and he then shot her a grin as he saw a pair of sweatpants and a shirt rolled up inside.

"Took them out of your locker at the precinct," Clary told him as he pulled them out and handed them over. She averted her eyes as he quickly pulled off the hospital gown and got dressed, barely paying any attention to the wounds he had just suffered that afternoon that afternoon, only wincing a couple of times.

She wanted to tell him to be careful and she wanted to tell him that staying in the hospital would be the best option but she didn't say either of those things.

One; their job was dangerous and there was no way that they could always be careful.

Two; he was never going to stay overnight in the hospital. He would have found a way to leave whether she was helping him or not.

She also wanted to tell him that she had never been so scared as she had been in the moment where that gunshot had gone off and Jace had fallen to the floor. She could feel the pressure roaring in her ears and she actually felt her eyes water slightly—which hadn't happened while she was on the job since she was a rookie.

But she couldn't tell him that.

Because whatever it was that they had, it was new and it was barely spoken about and it was all tentative.

They had been partners for three years on the job but it was only two months ago that they had crossed that line that they had been dancing around for so long. They were careful about what they did and what they said, because of them were fiercely independent and they both threw themselves into work with barely any time for any semblance of a personal life. Neither of them had been in long term relationships before and neither of them really knew what to do and so at the moment, they were stuck in that _extremely_ delicate phase where they were both doing a lot of the physical things and keeping all the emotional things trapped inside.

"You ready?" Clary asked, raising an eyebrow as she looked back to Jace, who was shifting from foot to foot with a grimace, leaning most of his weight on the leg that wasn't injured. "Do you need crutches or anything? Or a sling?" She crinkled up her nose as she looked at his shoulder, where there was heavy padding of the bandages wrapped around it.

"There's no way I'm walking out of here with a crutch," Jace immediately said, a horrified expression on his face, and Clary snorted. He went to pick up his bag with his injured arm, not really thinking and then he cringed and unfurled his fingers from around the strap. "Maybe a sling," he muttered, obviously not liking the taste of the words coming out of his mouth. Clary couldn't help but grin in amusement as she turned to walk toward the door, to find a nurse and get a sling. She was just about to duck around the thin curtain that Jace had pulled around his portion of the room as he had gotten dressed, but he had to stop and looked back at him.

"You fucking get shot again and I'm gonna break your nose," Clary told him, not caring that there was a little wobble in her voice as she looked over at her partner. Usually he would be standing tall, shoulders pushed back and head held high. Now, he had his hip propped against the bed to take the weight off his injured leg and his right shoulder was slumped forward. He still had that determined glint in his eye though, and his chin was jutted forward.

But his eyes softened at her words.

"I know," he murmured with a small smile, telling her that he knew that she was saying a whole lot more than what she had _actually_ said. Clary jerked her head in a nod, feeling her heart flutter at that, before stalking out of the room to hide the sheen of tears in her eyes.

 **So my song recommendations this week... _Polygraph Eyes_ by Yungblud, I think it's incredible. Also the live cover version _I Will Follow You Into The Dark_ by Yungblud and Halsey, and this also shows incredible chemistry between them. So, Yungblud, real name Dominic Harrison...I totally understand that he's not everyone's cup of tea, but I adore him. He's only twenty-one and he has written some incredible songs. _Polygraph Eyes_ is about sexual assault and the consent issue that is so big right now. _Medication_ that talks about our heavily medicated society, and _Kill Somebody_ , which is a something of a visual representation of depression and anxiety, which hits hard for me. He's really open about his own mental illness and ADHD, and he's continually breaking down gender norms and sexual stereotypes—dude wears more pink that a Disney princess, rocks dresses and skirts, regularly makes out with his guitarist and has a beautiful relationship with Halsey. I recommend him so much, he's just so unapologetically himself and blunt and incredible, please, please, please check him out. **

**TV series and movies...I'm really enjoying _Bull_ and _Ray Donovan_ at the moment. Also, _Animal Kingdom_ , which I started watching for Finn Cole, who is also in _Peaky Blinders_ , and it's fucking amazing. So is _Peaky Blinders_ , though. So both of them. We also recently rewatched _Hairspray_ , which I adore. Haha. **

**Ooh, also! We have release date for the new _Veronica Mars_ series! I feel like I've been waiting a life time for it. And for _Big Little Lies_! I wasn't to keen on a second season just because the first one was complete and there was only one book, but I'm still excited for it. **

**I've gone to a couple of concerts this month; Anne Marie and Billie Eilish. Both of them had such incredible voices live, they sounded pretty much exactly like their studio recordings and they had such insane energy. Anne Marie seemed like a total sweetheart, full of smiles and giggles, and then Billie was just amazing, that girl is going places given she's gotten this far and she's only seventeen. The whole crowd for Billie was on their feet the whole time, even us in the seated section—she was just magnetic. Tickets for her were insane, we only just managed to get some in the last release.**

 **Ooh, and Drax Project have a new music video out for their song _Woke Up_ Late featuring Hailee Steinfeld. My hubby wasn't too happy, because it's got Liza Koshy in it and he finds her frustrating at hell. **

**Now for my questions! Okay...What is a ship, or multiple ships, that have broken your heart, or that have really made you feel just a little fucked up? Can be canon or not. My top one would have to be Hanna/Caleb from _Pretty Little Liars_. I absolutely fucking hated season 6 and 7 of _PLL_ , and I stopped watching it until they got back together, and even then, it actually felt like my whole stomach had been ripped out of my body when there was the whole Spencer/Caleb story line. And then the other two would be Landon/Jamie from _A Walk To Remember_ and Ian/Mickey from _Shameless_. Holy shit. My fucking heart. There are plenty of other couples that really hit me as well, Steve/Bucky from _Avengers_ , Alex/Michael from _Roswell: New Mexico_ , Bellamy/Clarke from _The 100_ , Logan/Veronica from Veronica Mars, Chuck/Blair from _Gossip Girl_ , Will/Alicia from _The Good Wife_ and Jane/Michael from _Jane The Virgin_ to name a few.**

 **Next one; what is your favourite colour? Super easy, right? Haha. Although I don't have one, so maybe it's not...Green or purple? Maybe? Haha.**

 **And then; are you preparing to be emotionally fucked up by _Avengers: Endgame_ , or are you completely indifferent? I'm seeing it in a couple of hours, and I tell you, I am fucked. And I am _going_ to be so fucked. I've looked up every spoiler possible, watched a bit of the leaked footage and I'm still not prepared. If you guys want any spoilers or anything, just message me, and I'll try to retain everything through my hysteria.**

 **Just as my last point, my love and heart goes out to those in Sri Lanka. My cousin and I cried when waking up and reading what happened and I can't even fathom how those who were involved and directly affected are feeling right now.**

 **Love to you all xx**


	5. E: Enchanted

**E : _Enchanted_ \- Taylor Swift  
Requested by _trisherondalemorgenstern_**

 _This night is sparkling, don't you let it go  
_ _I'm wonderstruck, blushing all the way home  
_ _I'll spend forever wondering if you knew  
_ _This night is flawless, don't you let it go  
_ _I'm wonderstruck, dancing around all alone  
_ _I'll spend forever wondering if you knew  
_ _I was enchanted to meet you_

Clarissa Morgensterns heart was pounding in her chest as she got out of dark blue Mercedes. She was still wearing the dress that she had left her house in the night before—a strapless, dove grey and pale pink dress that clung to her breasts and then loosened around her waist, where the short tulle skirt fluffed out around her thighs before it ended, a few inches above her knee. She wasn't wearing the sparkling grey high heels though, she had those gripped in her hand.

"Um," Clary bit down on her lower lip, able to taste the strawberry lip balm that she had rubbed over them a few hours ago. "Thank you...For the ride home," she said as she looked across at the golden haired man sitting in the drivers seat. He was dressed similarly to how she was, in full prom attire, a black tuxedo that fitted him perfectly and a pale pink shirt that had the top couple of buttons undone. There had been a black tie as well, but that had long disappeared.

"No problem," Jace Herondale smiled at her, his eyes looking a little tired—which made sense, since it was almost seven in the morning and they hadn't slept at all the night before—but they were still bright and sincere as they met her gaze.

Clary forced herself to give him one last smile and then straighten up, closing the door and stepping away from the curb. She expected the car to pull away, but he didn't, he just kept idling there. Clary backed away, unable to stop her smile as she turned around when she got to the fence at the front of her house and practically skipped up the path. It wasn't until she was unlocking her front door that the car pulled away from the curb and drove away. She was glad that her mother was out at her boyfriends for the night, or else she would undoubtedly be going through twenty questions about the night before.

Instead, she practically glided down the hallway, her body exhausted but her heart thudding in her chest, unhindered by any questions about why she was coming home in her prom dress, given she was meant to spend the night at Simon Lewis' place, where she had a change of clothes.

Once she got to her room, she unzipped her dress so that she was just there in panties and a strapless bra, and then fell down onto her bed, grinning widely up at the ceiling.

Her best friend, Simon, had shifted schools this year after his mum had got a promotion and moved across the city to be closer. Clary and Simon had been best friends since they were in diapers, and a change in school wasn't going to change that. He had been her date to her prom two weeks ago, just so that he was able to come and hang out with their group of friends that they had grown up with; Maia Roberts, Jordan Kyle, Bartholomew Velasquez and Gretel Monroe, and in turn, she was his date to his own. It was all very platonic, especially since Simon had a big thing for a girl at his new school, Isabelle Lightwood, and that was made very obvious the night before.

They had arrived at the hotel where the prom was being held and a dark haired girl who looked drop-dead gorgeous in a long red dress and high heels that put her a good inch above Simon called out to them from a table where there were two other boys sitting and a blonde girl. Simon had hissed at Clary to act cool before leading her over to the table.

He had introduced them; the dark haired beauty was Isabelle, the dark haired boy next to her was her brother, Alexander Lightwood, the golden haired guy next to him was Jace and the blonde was Lydia Branwell, who was more interested in her phone than what was happening around her. Apparently her boyfriend was meant to come tonight, but he was older and sounded like a bit of delinquent, because he'd been busted for drunk driving last night and was still in jail.

But none of that really mattered, because Clary only had eyes for Jace.

Isabelle ended up dragging Simon onto the dance floor for most of the evening, Alec ended up disappearing out through the back doors of the hotel ballroom with a man in a sparkling jacket and Lydia had wandered off to find someone who had smuggled alcohol in, which left Jace and Clary.

He laughed and he talked and he asked her about her classes and where she was planning on going after she finished her senior year next year. He got her a drink when her eyes began wandering toward the drinks table and he walked up to get food with her when the buffet was brought out. He asked her to dance when a slow song came on and then he held her hand as they went back to their table.

He barely left her side.

Clary noticed a few of the jealous looks that got sent their way, and she really wasn't that surprised, because Jace was gorgeous.

He was definitely the most gorgeous person that had ever paid attention to her in her entire life.

But it was more than that as well, and that was proved when they were talking about the after party. Alec and his date, Magnus Bane, came back to the table about twenty minutes before the prom was meant to finish. Lydia was nowhere to be seen, but none of her friends seemed particularly worried. There were a couple of after parties happening, but Magnus suggested that they go back to his dad's place, since he was away on a business trip and their beachfront home would be empty.

They all headed there, split up between Jace and Isabelle's cars.

Alec and Magnus immediately headed upstairs to Magnus' room while Isabelle lead Simon down a long hallway with a half-assed excuse that they were looking for the liquor cabinet. But after half an hour and they still hadn't come back, it was pretty clear that they weren't looking for liquor.

But that was completely fine, because Jace and Clary had headed out the back of the house to where it backed onto the beach, and were sitting in the sand dunes. They sat there as the tide went out and the waves sparkled under the twinkling lights, and they were still sitting out there as the sun began to rise, orange and pinks and reds playing off the surface of the water.

They talked about _everything_ and when she shivered in the night breeze, Jace shrugged out of his jacket and slung it over her shoulders, and then left his arm there. They talked about movies and music and Jace admitted to being just a little infatuated with Meryl Streep while Clary disclosed that her and Simon had been to Comic-Con in complete cosplay for the past five years, and she _loved_ it. It felt as though they were skimming through ever topic known to man, but it didn't feel as though they had been talking for that _long_ , until Simon came out from the house, blinking sleepily, and saying that they should probably get home.

It was only then that Clary realized what time it was, and that she hadn't been to sleep yet.

Jace had looked pretty surprised as well.

Clary felt as though she was floating on air when Jace offered to take her home, and Isabelle said she would take Simon. She had handed Jace back his jacket and he had rested his hand on her knee as he had driven her home. Her stomach was twisted in knots, and she had been a bit nervous when he had first pulled over outside her house and she had asked for his number. But Jace had been more than happy to give it to her, giving her a wide smile that made her heart skip a beat.

And now she was lying on top her bed covers, knowing that she really needed to get some sleep, but she just felt so keyed up about her evening.

She was just considering getting up to have a shower and hope that it calmed her down, when her phone vibrated in her hand.

 _Coffee this afternoon? I could pick you up around three?_

A smile almost broke Clary's face in half as she quickly replied to the text, agreeing to the coffee date, and afterwards, she promptly fell asleep, her mind quieted after knowing that she would be seeing Jace again in just a couple of hours.

 **I don't really have the energy for a paragraph thing sorry. I've been fucking spiraling for the past six weeks or so, although I guess I had my birthday? Which was okay?**

 **Um... _Nightmare_ by Halsey is a fucking anthem and I don't know how many times I've listened and cried to it in the past day and half it's been out.**

 **Hope you enjoyed the update.**


	6. F: Fireproof

**F : _Fireproof_ \- One Direction**  
 **Requested by _Laurinis_**

 _'Cause nobody knows you, baby, the way I do_  
 _And nobody loves you, baby, the way I do_  
 _It's been so long, it's been so long, maybe we're fireproof_  
 _'Cause nobody saves me, baby, the way you do_

Jace Herondale was passed from foster home to foster home for as long as he could remember. He knew that there was a place when he was younger with an older woman and her husband, and he liked it there, but then the older man passed away and the woman felt bad and was crying but she explained to him that she wasn't able to raise him on her own. He was about seven at the time and he didn't understand, all he knew was that she was telling him to leave, just like all the other people had, and just like the people for the next nine years would.

He finally settled down with a family called the Roberts when he was sixteen. The brother, Daniel Roberts, who was two years older than him and who was, putting it simply, an asshole. He was a good looking senior who was captain of the football team and his parents treated him like he could do nothing wrong. But he knew how good looking he was, he knew how talented he was, he knew how charming he was, and he used it to his advantage, blaming his younger sister, Maia Roberts, whenever something went wrong.

It wasn't that the Roberts parents treated Maia _badly_ , exactly, but they made it very clear who the favourite was.

Things were rocky between Jace and Maia to begin with, because Jace was smart, and he had learnt to protect himself using sarcasm and harsh words, and he didn't realize it at the start, but he treated Maia the same way that her brother did.

It wasn't until one of Maia's best friends, Clarissa Morgenstern, called him out on it that he realized what he was doing and adjusted his ways.

In fact, it was Clary that called him out on a lot of things.

She lived just down the road from Maia, and along with the third of their little trio, Simon Lewis, they took Jace in and treated him more like family than any of the people who had ever taken him in ever had. Simon helped him with his school work, especially Math, since he had fallen so far behind, moving from one school to another and never being at one long enough to get a full grasp on the subjects. Maia helped him deal with her parents and her brother—because while her parents were kind enough to take him in, it was more about the cheque that they got from the government—and sometimes David would wind Jace up to the point where he wanted to punch him in the face, and that would have resulted in him loosing the friends that he had finally made.

And Clary helped him with everything in between.

She forced him to branch out; to take up guitar lessons with one of her brothers friends—Alexander Lightwood. To join the basketball team. To go to parties—not with the point of getting drunk and forgetting what a shambles his life was, but to be with people who would laugh and joke and make him feel good. She made him see the good in life; to go to the beach early on a Saturday morning to watch the sunrise. To volunteer at the pet shelter and sit in the middle of the pen with the kittens and puppies and rabbits and laugh at the love the animals showered on him. To stand out in the rain in the middle of a hot summers day. She made him _see_ himself; to accept who he was. To be happy with who he was. To love who he was.

And he fell in love her as well.

He treasured every moment they had together.

Jace couldn't help his temper sometimes—after years of feeling as though he was never good enough, and having to protect his heart. He would lash out and say things that were intended to hurt but not things that he actually _meant_.

He got better at that though, at reigning it in.

It was Clary's mother that helped with that.

Not in a super obvious way, because although she was a psychologist by profession, she never made Jace feel as though he was under a microscope and being studied. But just in subtle ways, a few comments here and there.

He wondered if this was like to have a mother.

But even though he hurt her at times, Clary never stayed away for long. She gave him the space that she could tell he needed, and then she came back, eyebrows furrowed, lips pursed determinedly, refusing to let him burn her with the angry fire that burned inside of him and still scared even him at times.

As the years went by, and they grew together, he found another family, this time with the Morgensterns, who accepted him just as Clary, Maia and Simon had.

She saved him, over and over again, even though she just gave him a small smile and rolled her eyes playfully whenever he told her that. When he told her that he loved her, however, she always responded readily, her eyes soft and her mouth gentle, and she would would kiss his cheeks and his mouth and wrap her arms around him and hold him as though he was something precious, something treasured, something that deserved protection.

More years went by, and Jace found a way to channel that anger.

It turned out that he was rather a natural in the kitchen. Cooking was never really anything that he had done before, but Clary quite liked cooking, and so he helped her and it turned that he had a flair for it. To the point where Clary, Maia and Jocelyn were all encouraging him to go to culinary school.

It was expensive, and Jocelyn and Valentine Morgenstern had to co-sign his loan with him to pay for it, and it was something that he thought he would never be able to do.

But he did.

And now he was working one of the finest restaurant in New York.

Maia was there, with cheeky smiles and teasing words.

Simon and Jonathan Morgenstern were generally there to make sure he didn't let his head get too big.

Jocelyn and Valentine were the supportive parents he never had.

And Clary had his back every single step of the way.

She loved and supported him with everything she had.

And Jace would spend every day showing her how he appreciated and valued her.

That fire inside him was still there, but now, instead of trying to consume him with it's flames, it was burning _for_ something.

It was burning for Clary, and their future together.

 **Um...My song recommendations for this week would be _Hitchhiker_ by Demi Lovato, _All You Need To Know_ by Gryffin featuring Calle Lehmann, _Rollercoaster_ by The Jonas Brothers and _All This Time_ by Drax Project, which has just officially been released. The studio version doesn't quite hold up to the live version, it's like there's too much synth and they tried to downplay how powerful the sax it's, which is the best part of the song. I've got this recording of when we saw them at smaller concert, at a club, and the whole atmosphere is fucking amazing when this song comes on, if we're friends on Facebook or Snapchat and you want a copy, let me know and I'll send it through :) But I still recommend the version that's out there on Youtube and Spotify.**

 **Moviewise... _John Wick 3_ was incredible, as expected. I bawled by eyes out in _Rocketman_ , but it was so, so good. I adore Taron Egerton and Richard Maddon, and they played their roles so well. I don't recommend the new Ted Bundy film, tbh. I was looking forward to it, I love Zac Efron and Lily Collins, and Ted Bundy is a fascinating study subject, but...I just felt like it glorified him so much, and it honestly made me feel a bit sick. TV shows I would recommend would be _Madam Secretary, Harlots_ and _High Seas_. Also, did anyone watch the first episode of _Euphoria_? It is absolutely fucking amazing. I bawled my eyes out and my heart hurt and there were parts that hit a little close to home, but shit, it's so fucking good. **

**Lyric of the week...' _My daddy put a gun to my head/Said if you kiss a boy, I'm gonna shoot you dead/So I tied him up with gaffa tape and I locked him in a shed/Then I went out to the garden and I fucked my best friend_ '...**


	7. G: Galway Girl

**Merp, I've kinda lost track of my updating schedule? *Throws updates and internet cookies***

 **G : _Galway Girl_ \- Ed Sheeran**  
 **Requested by _Angel-Flower2610_**

 _She played the fiddle in an Irish band  
_ _But she fell in love with an English man  
_ _Kissed her on the neck and then I took her by the hand  
_ _Said, 'Baby, I just want to dance'  
_ _My pretty little Galway girl  
_ _My, my, my, my, my, my, my Galway girl  
_ _My, my, my, my, my, my, my Galway girl  
_ _My, my, my, my, my, my, my Galway girl_

Jace Herondale and his cousins, Alexander and Isabelle Lightwood, and Alec's boyfriend, Magnus Bane, had been backpacking around Europe for the past two months. They had all finished their university degrees just weeks before coming on this trip, and they had been saving for it since they had _started_ university, always talking about going on this overseas trip together before they started working full time and officially joined adult life.

They had made quite a few stops, moving through some of big cities before moving through some of the smaller towns. They had reached Galway in Ireland a week ago, and even though they should probably be talking about moving on from there, they had settled into the little motel that they were staying in.

And a big part of that was the red haired younger sister of the lead singer in a little Irish band that played at the pub below the motel that they were staying in.

Jace had never been in love, but he was pretty sure that this was it.

She laughed harder than any other girl he knew.

She sang louder than any other girl he knew.

She drank more than any other girl he knew.

She _loved_ her life and everyone in it with every piece of her, and these were all things that Jace saw within the first couple of hours of watching her. Everything else that he learnt after that just made things even better.

"No! No, no, no, no!" Clarissa Herondale cried out as she slammed her mug of half-filled beer down onto the sticky wooden table top. "Kylo Ren is a whiny little son-of-a-bitch and he will _never_ have my sympathy!" Jonathan Herondale let out an over-exaggerated groan as he threw his head back and stared up at the ceiling. There were laughs from the rest of the table, including from Jace, who was sitting next to Clary, and across from Isabelle, who was sitting next to Jonathan. Although Jace was mainly just staring at Clary, wide eyed, absolutely loving the way her Irish accent became even stronger when she was worked up about something.

They had been arguing about this topic—the whole band had been, so that included Simon Lewis and Raphael Santiago—for over an hour now and even though Jace wasn't interested in the subject itself, he loved watching Clary get all worked up. Her cheeks were red and her hair was coming out of the bun on top of her head, tendrils falling around her face.

"As much as I would _love_ to continue to listen to this," Maia Roberts appeared at their side, grinning at the table. "You guys are up." She was a bartender, as well as Simon and Raphael's girlfriend, and so she was all too aware that they could all continue arguing until the sun rose the next morning, so she was there to interject and make sure that they ended up on stage when they were supposed to.

"Alright!" Jonathan quickly finished off the rest of his beer, leaned in and gave Isabelle a kiss on the mouth and then slid out from the booth. "Let's go!" He clapped his hands together and the rest of the band got up as well. Clary grinned at Jace and leaned to adorably nuzzle her nose against his before skipping up to the stage, picking up her fiddle from where it was leaning against one of the chairs on stage and plucking a few of the strings.

Jace had never really been into folk music before watching Clary and the band play. It wasn't that he thought his music taste had evolved too much, he knew it had to do with the actual woman playing and singing, but he didn't care. Clary played the fiddle absolutely incredibly, and with Jonathan's deep, smooth voice leading the vocals, Simon playing a flute and Raphael on a keyboard, they drew quite a large crowd whenever they were paying at pubs.

After they finished their set, there was more beer and shots and it was after two in the morning that they were ordered by Maia out of the pub. Isabelle and Jonathan disappeared upstairs to the room that she and Jace had been sharing, since neither of them wanted to share with Alec and Magnus. Raphael and Simon were groping each other, not caring that they were still in public, and when Maia came out of the pub, finished with closing up, they turned their attention to her, and the three of them quickly disappeared.

"Coming home with me?" Clary asked, raising her eyebrows at Jace, her Irish accent tainting her words gorgeously.

"If you'll have me," Jace grinned at her. The moon was bright above them, shining down on them in the narrow alley beside the pub, barely deterred by the street lamps that were curled down above them.

"I'll have you as long as you're around," Clary grinned back at him, green eyes glinting up at him. Jace knew that she didn't mean it in a bad way, but he couldn't help but think that all of this was going to be over soon. He was going to be moving on with his cousins and Magnus and she was just going to move on with her life. "Hey," Clary reached forward and gripped his hand, bouncing a little, fueled by the perpetual good mood she seemed to be in and the alcohol in her blood. "Come on!" She grinned again and tugged at his hand, and then she was skipping down the cobbled street, leading him with her.

They went past a couple of pubs that were still open, music playing softly inside as the employees closed down for the night, and it seemed as though Clary knew every song that was playing, humming along to it as they passed by each of the pubs. They passed by a fountain where Clary _always_ stopped to toss in a few coins and then they carried on to her apartment. It was a tiny place—their motel rooms were bigger—but it was completely filled with life, just like Clary.

"Oh my god," Clary laughed as she fumbled with the keys for the back door that lead up some narrow stairs to her room. She held her liquor better than Jace did, which is why Jace had to slow down in the last hour while she had kept going, matching her brother drink for drink until they were both pretty glassy eyed.

"You good?" Jace asked with a laugh as she dropped her keys. Both he and Clary reached down to get the keys at the same time and they bumped heads on their way down. Clary laughed and straightened back up, leaning against the wooden door frame as Jace picked the keys up from the ground. He held them out to her, but rather than taking them from his hand she leaned in so that their lips came together.

It was kind of a mush and he could taste the salt on her lips from the tequila shots that she and Isabelle had done and also the bitterness of the beer that she had been drinking, and so the kiss was kind of sloppy, but Jace didn't care. Clary's body was soft against his and her hair was fluffy around both of their faces and her kiss was enthusiastic and sweet and was pretty much the best thing that had happened to Jace all day. When they pulled apart, Clary's eyes took a few moments to open and Jace appreciated the beauty of her face for those beats before she opened her eyes and smiled sweetly up at him.

"My pretty little Galway girl," Jace murmured to her and her smile widened as she leaned back in to kiss him. When she pulled back, she managed to find the right key and unlock it, then she grabbed his hand and dragged him up the stairs, a salacious grin on her face as she did so, promising all sorts of things once they got to her room.

 **So songs I recommend are _I Think I'm OKAY_ by MGK, Yungblud and Travis Baker, which I absolutely adore, and the song and especially the music video give me intense early 2000's feels, and _Lost_ by Dermont Kennedy, which is so damn beautiful, I've completely fallen in love with it. Also _Lost Without You_ by Freya Ridlings, which was sent to me by _Reppinda5o3_ and is completely heart breaking. Umm...I can't really think of many movies and TV series I've been watching lately. Sorry :( **

**Okay, so, questions; what's your lockscreen/homescreen/blah blah blah? My lockscreen is Dominic Harrison and my homescreen is Demi Lovato, both total babes.**

 **Umm...What are you go-to feel good movies? Mine are—not in any type of order— _Princess Bride, The Swan Princess, Stardust, Spirit_ and _Frozen_. Lol. Not even sorry. I think _Catch and Release_ might be working its way onto this list as well. **

**...' _Please tell me I'm your one and only/Or lie and say at least tonight/I've got a brand new cure for lonely/And if you give me what I want/Then I'll give you what you like_ '...**

 **xxxxxxx**


	8. H: Here With Me

**H : _Here With Me_ \- Dido**  
 **Requested by _Jling_**

 _Oh I am what I am  
_ _I'll do what I want  
_ _But I can't hide  
_ _I won't go  
_ _I won't sleep  
_ _I can't breathe  
_ _Until you're resting here with me_

 _I won't leave  
_ _I can't hide  
_ _I cannot be  
_ _Until you're resting here with me_

Clarissa Morgenstern should be used to the waiting and the not knowing and the nauseous feeling in the pit of her stomach that came alongside all the waiting and the not knowing. It had been nearly eighteen hours since her man had left alongside his brothers, and they said that they would be back six hours ago.

They ran late sometimes.

Things happened.

Clary knew that.

But given that the _Devils Sons_ were going up against another MC that was just as big and just as ruthless as them, Clary couldn't help but be worried.

They'd already had two deaths; Jem Carstairs and Max Lightwood—two kids that Clary had known almost as long as she had known Jace Herondale. Jem had died when a gun buy went sideways last month and Max had been murdered in cold blood, while he was driving back from his girlfriends place.

Both had been by the _Reapers_.

They had sent a girl in, Seelie Queen, who had been passed around by a couple of the biker boys. She hadn't appeared to be anything more than a biker groupie, enjoying the rough and tumble life style with the free booze and drugs and sex that came with it. But it had turned out that her brother was in the _Reapers_ and she had been feeding them intel the whole time she had been there. She never found out _too_ much, given the whores were never allowed around when actual business was being discussed, and the brothers who slept with them were careful not to say anything since only old ladies should hear from their men. But there were still things that she was able to pick up on, just small things here and there.

And then it turned out she had planted bugs around the clubhouse, in the meeting room and in a couple of the bedrooms in the compound.

Which had lead to the _Devils Sons_ being compromised and two of their brothers being killed.

So now they were striking back.

They had left their town of Idris on their bikes at four thirty that morning, and it was now getting closer and closer to eleven at night and Clary was pacing. All of the old ladies and their children were at the compound, left with four of the brothers who were tasked with keeping them safe in case there were any threats while they were away. Nothing had happened so far, but that didn't stop them from being anxious.

Some of the woman were asleep by now.

Actually, most of them were.

The whole compound was quiet, except for the murmurings of Isabelle Lightwood in the room opposite Clary as she tried to shush her newborn baby. Clary had been trying to sleep, but after she had managed to get her son, Isaac Herondale to sleep, she had got back up from the narrow bed they were squished in together and was pacing the small room. She hadn't slept here in a long time, given her and Jace had a house together, but when they had first gotten together, she used to spend a lot of time in the tiny room and the even smaller bed.

A small smile pulled at her lips as she remembered the first time they had fallen onto the bed together.

She had been in town to visit her brother, Jonathan Morgenstern, who had moved to Idris when he had come out of the army the year before. He had joined a biker club, and Clary had all sorts of horrible thoughts going through her head about what to expect, but she had been pleasantly surprised. They were like a family. A very rough around the edges family, but a family nonetheless. Clary could understand why Jonathan had been drawn in, because they had lost their parents when they were young, and had been raised by an aunt who had been more interested in the money that came with looking after them than the children themselves. There was a sense of belonging.

It had been three days before she had plucked up the courage to talk to Jace, who had been making eyes at her since she had arrived, and then it was just a day later before he had her on the back of his bike.

She had moved to Idris a few months later, and officially became his old lady, with a leather jacket that matched his and a tattoo on her hip stating that she was part of _Devils Sons_.

It was less than a year later before she was pregnant with Isaac.

Things were different with the club than her life before, and there were a lot of changes that she went through. Luckily, she had Isabelle and Maia Roberts who helped her learn the ropes. While Jace was the one who taught her how to handle a gun and how to shoot, and it was Alexander Lightwood and Max who had taught her how to fight and defend herself, it was Isabelle and Maia who taught her how to emotionally deal with the life of being an old lady of a biker.

How to keep her emotions tampered down when it public, because she needed to show a united front when with Jace, even if she disagreed with him. How to deal with the barely dressed whores who threw themselves at the bikers, even when it was clear that they had woman. How to deal with the long nights when she was alone in their bed, get countless blood stains out of clothes, patch up a bullet wound and provide the emotional support that Jace needed after he had killed a man.

Her life now was nothing that she thought it would be when she was younger.

She didn't think that she would have soul broken into four parts and her heart split into two. Her soul was made up of herself, her son, the club that was now family and her man. Her heart was divided between her son and her man.

She was never whole when one of them wasn't with her.

And right now, Clary couldn't sleep, because her four year old son was fast asleep, but Jace was away, and she couldn't stop her worrying.

Clary checked her phone every few minutes, and the time ticked by so slowly that it was making her skin itch. The moon was shining brightly outside, falling in a pale bluish-grey puddle on the end of the bed, thankfully not at the end where Isaac's head was resting. The sky was completely cloudless, the stars glowing, and it seemed like such a beautiful night for her to be worried about such a horrible thing.

It was just after twelve when there was a shout from downstairs. Clary checked on Isaac—who was still fast asleep—and then went for the gun that was kept in the top drawer of the chippe tall boy in the corner of the room. She wasn't sure if the shout was a good or bad thing, but she was going down to find out, she wasn't going to stay up in the room any longer than necessary. As Clary came out of her room, she saw Maia doing the same thing, at the end of the hall, and Camille Belcourt as well. Isabelle opened her door opposite Clary, and she looked absolutely exhausted, holding her baby in her arms.

"Stay here," Clary told her firmly, knowing that if the shout had been about bad news, at least one of them needed to be upstairs. Isabelle jerked her head in a nod, moving back into her room but leaving her door open so she could hear if things turned south downstairs. Clary followed after Maia and Camille, keeping her finger curled around the trigger of the gun, the safety already flicked off.

Then there was another shout, and another, and then the sound of motorbikes approaching, their engines cutting through the silence of the quiet night. Bartholomew Velasquez and Daniel Quinn, two of the prospects who had been left behind to watch over their compound, were standing out on the deck and they didn't have their guns raised.

That was a good sign.

Clary and Maia exchanged looks before quickly making their way out of the building. They could hear the excitement spreading through the building, and soon there were more women and family members coming downstairs, from the second floor and third floor, and from the back of the building. Clary had just stepped through the doorway when she heard a call behind her.

"Mama!" Isaac called, his voice sounding wide awake even though his eyes still looked a little sleepy as he wound his way through the people and made his way quickly to her. The heavy, wrought iron gates swung open with a groan at the bottom of the compound, and the roar of the bikes was getting closer and louder.

In one hand, Clary was holding her sons hand. In the other, she was holding a gun. A gun that she had used more than once on someone who had threatened the people she loved.

As the bikes got closer, Clary's eyes skimmed over them, looking for one in particular, just like the rest of the woman and family members were doing.

And there he was.

Almost directly behind the president, who was riding at the front, was Jace. His face was stony and she could tell even in the shoddy light of the spot lights set up around the front yard of the compound that his eyes were dark.

She could only imagine the things that had happened, that he had seen that day.

Stephen Herondale, the president, got off his bike first, and the rest of the brothers began dismounting behind him. Jace got off, and he held himself tall and proud. There was movement all around them, as the bikers joined together with their families. Isaac was nearly vibrating out of his skin beside Clary, wanting to run to his father, but he held himself back, waiting until he got the signal from either one of his parents.

Clary's legs and arms were cold, given she was only wearing a tiny pair of sleeping shorts and a singlet, but she didn't pay any attention to it. She only saw Jace getting closer to them, unbuckling his helmet, the strap hanging from his fingers. She looked over him quickly, and she noted a tear in the shirt he had on underneath his leather jacket, the blood that was smeared on the thighs of his jeans and split knuckles with blood crusted around them. It also looked as though there was blood gathering in the corner of his mouth, maybe the result from a punch to the face. Jace kept walking until he was right in front of her, his chin jutted forward, and he saw his eyes soften as he looked down at her, and then to their son.

"My love," he whispered, and Clary launched herself forward, wrapping her petite body tightly around his, arms around his neck and legs around his hips. She felt her body shake slightly, the tears of relief gathering inside of her threatening to spill over, but she kept them back, making sure they didn't show, refusing to show weakness until they were upstairs, in the privacy of her room.

She felt the arms of her son go around her legs as well as her mans and Jace held her tightly with one arm dropping down to wrap around their sons shoulders.

She was whole again.

 **Alright! Another mass update! I'm just...In a super shitty place right now, completely mental, my life is actually in a really good space—isn't it great when that happens? But writing is generally therapeutic so...Here we go.**

 **Movies I would recommend would be _Where The Heart Is_ , which is an old time favourite for me, and _How To Be Single_ , which I actually quite like, even though I don't like Dakota Johnson. It's like my love for Leslie Mann cancels that out though. Haha. I don't know...Both of these movies make me really sad and happy at the same time, so it's good.**

 **Songs that I've recently fallen in love with are _Perfectly Wrong_ by Shawn Mendes, _Chateau_ by Angus & Julia Stone, _You Make It Easy_ by Jason Aldean and _Marry Me_ by Thomas Rhett. Recommend any songs that you guys have had on repeat recently :)**

 **Hope you're all doing well, and please leave a review and let me know what you thought of the chapter because I love your comments x**


	9. I: Issues

**Okay, this is gonna be another one of these months you get two updates in month, so...*throws internet cookies***

 **I : _Issues_ \- Julia Micheals  
** **Requested by _AFourAddict_ and _Sunshinekacy_**

 _'Cause I got issues, but you got 'em too  
_ _So give 'em all to me and I'll give mine to you  
_ _Bask in the glory, of all our problems  
_ _'Cause we got the kind of love it takes to solve 'em  
_ _Yeah, I got issues  
_ _And one of them is how bad I need you_

Clarissa Morgenstern stormed into her apartment, slamming the door behind her so hard that the pictures hanging on the walls shook. She knew that he was only a few steps behind her, and so it wasn't going to be long before he was shoving the door open, and a part of her wondered briefly if she should grab one of the kitchen chairs and jam it underneath the door so that he couldn't open, but then she dismissed that idea. One, it would take precious seconds away from the distance she could put between the two of them and two, he would just end up kicking the door down, and then they would have an even bigger mess on their hands.

She had made it to the bedroom when she heard the door bang open and she ground her teeth together when it was thrown shut and she heard one of the pictures fall off the wall and glass shatter on the ground. She bit down her lower lip to stop herself from shouting at him for breaking something and set about ripping off her boots. She almost tripped over when she didn't unlace the left one properly and ended up bouncing down on the end of the bed.

"Clarissa!" Jace Herondale shouted out. She heard him go into the kitchen and then come through the lounge and into the short hallway until he appeared in the doorway, that door swinging open and the doorknob banging against the door. "Look, Clarissa—I didn't have a choice!"

"Don't give me that shit, Jace," Clary growled at him. "You _did_ have a choice! And you chose to put your ass out on the fucking line! _Literally_! You climbed out onto a ledge! You could have died!"

"That's our job, Clarissa!" Jace bellowed at her.

"No! No, it's not!" Clary nearly tripped for a second time in her haste to get off the bed and get in front of Jace, jabbing her finger into his chest. "It's _not_ our job! That's what the police are for! Or the firefighters!"

"We were the first ones on the scene! I'd already been talking to her! You expect me to back down and let one of them take over?! Those cops were kids—they wouldn't have had a clue how to talk to her!" Jace shouted back at her. Clary glared at him, her jaw set, and she took in a deep breath through her nose. It obviously wasn't about to calm her down—with her fiery red hair and sparking green eyes, she was a picture of fury.

"Alright," she told him in an eerily calm voice. "So first, there was the burning building. We're paramedics. We're meant to help the people once they've been brought out by cops or by firefighters or by whoever. We're not meant to run in there without any protective equipment and risk our fucking lives."

"Clary—"

"No!" She interrupted him, holding up one hand with narrow eyes. "Then there were the bar fights. The _countless_ bar fights. Fights that you were never even a part of, but that you had to jump in and try to help finish because you _always_ have to try and help finish them. Then there's that meth lab that you ran into after the police went in and you nearly _fucking died_ in the explosion. You're not supposed to go in there until _after_ it's been cleared out." Jace heard the shake in her voice and he could see the sheen in her eyes. "There's the time that you jumped into the lake when it was almost _frozen over_ to get that little girl without waiting for the proper people and there's that time when you climbed out onto the bridge with that old man because apparently New York is just _filled_ with people who want to jump from all sorts of heights—and _I'm_ with the man who wants to go out and save them all!"

"Clary..." Jace's voice was softer this time. He could tell that she was coming to the end of her rant because her voice was still pitching loudly in the middle of her sentences but she wasn't smushing her words together quite as much.

"You can't keep doing this, Jace! You can't just keep throwing yourself in dangers way! There are people that are trained for those situations and that's _not_ you! We're supposed to go in there _after_ everything has been cleared, when everything's as safe as it possibly can be—I know that we have a line of work where things _can_ get dangerous, but you don't need to chase after the danger!" Clary could feel the tears beginning to pool. "You _can't save everyone_."

But he was going to try.

And she knew it.

He couldn't save his mother, Celine Herondale, from the abusive relationships she spiraled into after his father died and he hadn't been able to save his youngest cousin, Max Lightwood, when he had been watching him at the park before he had run out onto a busy road to get a stray soccer ball.

"I have to try," Jace told her, his voice hoarse as he met Clary's eyes. She swallowed hard and her lips parted as though she had something more to say, but she just took in a deep, shaky breath and closed her eyes, tipping her head backwards so that her face was looking up at the ceiling. Jace didn't move at first, giving her a few moments before he stepped forward and wrapped an arm around her shoulders and curled her in against his chest. Clary kept on breathing deeply, and he could feel her trembling in his arms.

"One day...One day you're going to try and save someone and you're going to end up being the one that needs to be saved," Clary said, her voice muffled against his shirt. "And I don't know what I'm going to do."

Because Clary didn't have anyone else.

Her parents had died when she was younger.

Her brother was an asshole who had decided to take his share of the estate and take off without a word to Clary.

Her best friend, Simon Lewis, had died slowly two and a half years ago of cancer while Clary had been at his side.

Clary had a drowning fear of loosing the people closest to her, especially Jace, which was a fear that just got bigger and bigger as Jace's hero complex drove him into more dangerous situations.

"I'm never going to leave you," Jace said, gripping her tighter. "I promise. I'm always going to be here for you."

He couldn't promise that.

They both knew it.

But they were in it together.

 **I watched the movie _It's Kind of a Funny Story_ for the first time, I've been meaning to watch it for years, but I just never had. I'm really glad I did, so I definitely recommend it. It's got Zach Galifianakis, Viola Davis and Emma Roberts and it's just a really really good. Sort of similar to _Perks of Being a Wallflower_ , although nowhere near as good since that's my favourite movie of all time. Haha. Also as I'm writing this, we're watching _Big Hero 6_ and I just adore this movie so much. They're all just amazing, and Tadashi is just...The most beautiful person in the world. Oh, and the other day I watched _Need For Speed_ again, which is just a mindlessly car racing movie, but I love Aaron Paul and Imogen Poots and so it's great. Haha.**

 **For TV shows, I've recently started _The Bold Type_ , and I'm completely in love, the three main girls are adorable, I don't know which one is my favourite so far. None? All? All, I think. And I absolutely love Alex. And Jacqueline is a fucking goddess. Honestly, the show just makes me so happy. Also _Crashing_ , which was fucking hilarious. Some of the lines in it were really cruel, actually, which kind of cut for a comedy show. I absolutely fucking LOVED Melody and Colin and Sam. Particularly Melody. Also, _Derry Girls_ , I've recommended it before, I'll do it again. Haha. My husband and I have watched it sooooooo many times, it's generally our go-to when stoned. Haha.**

 **Okay, so songs... Uh, some old ones I've been listening to— _Forever_ and _Sex Metal Barbie_ by In This Moment, um, also _Blood_ and _Adrenalize_. Slow _Fade_ by Ruth B, which is beautiful, _Cringe_ by Matt Maeson and the acoustic version is even better. _None Of My Business_ by Cher Lloyd and _Takeaway_ by The Chainsmokers and then _Hope For The Underrated Youth_ by Yungblud, which I bawled my eyes out over the first few times I listened to it.**

 **Okay; questions...Anyone into _Veronica Mars_? Anyone been into Veronica Mars since they were a child? Oh my god. I was so fucking disappointed by the reboot. Like, my entire heart dropped. I only got two episodes in, and I wasn't really enjoying it, I just felt like Veronica wasn't characterized well, she had actually regressed, and then I read the ending, and I just refused to go on. So...That's disappointment dating back to my primary school days.**

 **Umm...Favourite song right now? Mine is _hammer_ by nothing,nowhere.**

 **And how many tattoos do you have? I've just gotten my second one, and I think I'm getting a third in November, and then I've got plans for, like, four others.**

 **Anyway, drop a review, they make my day :)**


	10. J: Just A Kiss

**Hey, guys! Just a quick heads up that I'm not sure if there will be two updates for every story next month, like there has been for the past couple months, we'll just see how it goes. Working a lot at the moment and my husband and I are doing renovations on our home and just general busy life stuff, so don't have a lot of free time right now x**

 **J : _Just A Kiss_ \- Lady Antebellum**  
 **Requested by _FrenchBenzo_**

 _Just a kiss on your lips in the moonlight  
_ _Just a touch of the fire burning so bright  
_ _No I don't want to mess this thing up  
_ _I don't want to push too far  
_ _Just a shot in the dark that you just might  
_ _Be the one I've been waiting for my whole life  
_ _So baby I'm alright, with just a kiss goodnight_

They had been taking it slow.

Slower than Jace Herondale had ever gone with any girl before.

But, _god_ , it was worth it.

Because when Clarissa Morgenstern smiled, or laughed, or reached out and touched his arm—Jace didn't _care_ that it had been half a year since he had woken up next to someone else, or that he had barely even touched first base with her. She made him want to be better than who he was, and she made him want to be better for _her_.

Jace had been good friends with the Morgensterns for some time, for a number of years it had been with Jonathon Morgenstern, Clary's older brother. The pair of them had even been roommates at college, until Jonathon had left partway through their third year because both of their parents had been killed in a car accident. Clary had been seventeen at the time, and she had been in the car when it had crashed. She hadn't been badly hurt, but she had been arguing with her father at the time, distracting him from the road, and she had blamed herself for a long time.

That lead to a string of bad decisions on her behalf; older men, drugs, drinking and staying out for three days straight. Once they stopped getting her through her guilt, she started taking it out on her body, using razor blades and a box knife, and Jon found her passed out in a shower after taking too many sleeping pills.

Jace had just finished his degree when Jon had talked her into going to rehab, to help her recover from the drugs, the self-abuse and have someone who was able to talk to her. He came back to New York to work, and he helped Jon out as much as he could, which meant things like doing laundry and cleaning around the house. It also meant going to the rehab centre that Clary was booked into for an eight month stint, and after a few months, he had found himself going without Jon.

The first time he had told Jon that he had feelings for his baby sister, Jon seemed ready to punch him in the mouth.

It wasn't as though Jace could blame him for the reaction, Jace didn't have the best reputation when it came to girls.

Right from when they were in high school, through to when they were in college, Jace had never really been in a serious relationship. There had been Kaelie Whitewillow in high school, but that was more of a friends with benefits kind of arrangement. Then Camille Belcourt, but that had just been purely about sex, even if they did sometimes go out on actual 'dates', it would usually end with them in the bathroom of the restaurant they had gone to. Then there was Maia Roberts, who he had actually been exclusive with in his second year of college, they had actually been together for about six or seven months, and it had ended because she wanted to spend her time with someone who was actually serious about a long term relationship, and Jace just hadn't been ready for that.

So when Jace finally gathered enough courage and went to speak with Jon, to ask if he would be okay with him and Clary seeing each other in a way that was more than friendship, Jon looked as though he was ready to punch Jace in the face. If thing were different—if Clary was in a better emotional state—then he wouldn't even be asking Jon for _permission_. Clary was an adult, and he would generally have just asked her out directly, respected her right to make a decision for herself. But it was a little bit different, and Jon was his best friend and her brother, so the whole situation was a little off balance.

Eventually Jon calmed down, to the point where it didn't look as though he was going to give Jace a black eye, but there had been a definite threat of the removal of several important body parts if Jace ever hurt his baby sister.

Jace told Clary outright, the way that he felt about her. He wasn't going to be coy about it, or play some sort of game, like he would usually would. Clary had blushed, and fiddled with her hair, and then the smile had dissolved and she had told him that she wasn't sure if a relationship was the best idea for her right now, since she was only just getting back on her feet. Jace had been disappointed, but he had tried to be understanding. It wasn't until a couple of months later, when Clary was a lot more settled and had a part time job and was reaching out to her friends again, that she said she would be ready to start something, on the condition that they take it slow.

And so he did.

Because the truth was that he was falling hard for Clary, and he was ready to do or be anything she needed.

There was a lot of holding hands, and a lot of group outings. Jon still didn't look totally happy with the pair of them together, but he didn't say anything, and the tension slowly eased from his shoulders the longer that they were together. Jace wasn't sure if Clary talked about what they had together, because he definitely tried to avoid talking about it when he and Jon were hanging out, but Jon slowly came around.

They were now five months in, and Jace was taking her out to one of the best restaurants in the city, _Taki's_. There was a waiting list nearly a year long to get there, but Jace's mother was good friends with the restaurant owner and so he had managed to get them in.

Clary looked beautiful, as usual, in a long, dark purple dress, and her hair piled on top of her head, with little curls hanging around her face and down her neck, and Jace had even put on a suit. Jace didn't have any alcohol even though Clary had told him time and time again that she was okay with him drinking, but he just shook his head and ordered lemonade, the same as her. Dinner was incredible, and they tangled their legs up under the table, and they talked about the weird customers that Clary had had that day in the art gallery where she was working.

After they finished dinner, they went for a walk in the park.

Jace was talking about Isabelle Lightwood and her latest girlfriend, and then Clary was talking about how obsessed Simon Lewis was with a new girl who was working at the comic book shop down the road from his work. There were a couple of other people that they passed by in the park, but it was a pretty quiet night, and the sky was completely clear above them, the moon and stars shining down on them.

"Clary?" Jace said softly, stopping in his tracks and curling his fingers around hers tightly so that she stopped as well.

"Yeah?" Clary raised her eyebrows at him questioningly. She blinked up at him, and the moon was so bright above them that Jace could see everything on her face clearly, right down to the way her pupils were wide as she looked up at him, and almost every individual eyelash. Jace's lips curved up in a smile and Clary looked a little confused, but she smiled back up at him, and that was when Jace leaned down and kissed her.

It was close mouthed and Jace wasn't asking for anything more from her than she was ready to give. But her body was soft and relaxed into his, her arms going around his neck and lifting herself up to her tip toes so that she could keep their lips together. It was brief, but it set every nerve ending in Jace's body on fire. When they pulled apart, Clary's eyes were still closed as she settled back down on the flat of her feet.

"You're so perfect," Jace murmured, lifting up his hand to run his thumb gently over the apple of her cheek. Clary's eyes fluttered back open, and in the bright light of the moon, he could see that feeling in her eyes. It was the same love that he knew was reflected in his own eyes. It was too soon to say anything, but he knew it was there, and that was enough.

"You want to share an ice cream sundae before we go home?" Clary suggested.

"Sounds great," Jace told her with a grin, reaching down so that their fingers were interlaced again.

 **Songs that I recommend are _Die A Little_ by Yungblud, _Teeth_ by 5SOS, _Love Myself_ by Olivia O'Brien and _Middle Finger_ by Bohnes, all of which have just been on repeat for the past week or so. Also, my husband is completely obsessed with _Motivation_ by Normani and _Slide Away_ by Miley Cyrus, so I've been hearing those a lot recently as well. Lol.**

 **I've been fighting this cold/flu/virus things for moooonths now, and I took a day off work coz it hit hard and I was feeling sorry for myself and I just spent it watching fluffy movies that make me happy. Haha. _Footloose_ , the original one, of course, even though I don't mind the new one. _A Cinderella Story, Ever After, Raise Your Voice, Centre Stage: Turn It Up, What A Girl Wants, The Prince & Me, 13 Going On 30 _and _High School Musical_ so those are my recommendations!**

 **Okay, so questions—how many of you guys are planning on getting Disney+? Haha. It's just been announced that it _will_ be getting released in New Zealand, which we were worried it wouldn't be because so many streaming services aren't. But it's gonna be here in November and me and my partner are _psyched_! Haha.**

 **Is everyone else heartbroken about the Sony/Marvel breakdown? Honestly, my heart goes out to Tom Holland the most, because he has done such an incredible job. There's always going to be a special place in my heart for the OG Spiderman, but there's just something about Tom's version, he was fucking amazing and had so much heart, and I'm just _so upset_ that there isn't going to be more of him in this verse. He seemed so heart broken at D23. Poor baby :(**

 **Last one! Anyone watch performances at the VMAs? I honestly kind of think the VMAs/Oscars/The Golden Globes yadda yadda yadda are pretty bullshit, pretty biased, so I don't pay too much attention to the nominations and the winners, but I live for the outfits and the, like, two or three performances from artists I like. Lizzo and Missy Elliott were fucking _amazing_ , and I screamed when Alyson Stoner came out on stage. Miley Cyrus' performance was totally heart breaking, so fucking good. And Halsey and Jonathan Van Ness were my stand out outfits! Oh also—Joe and Nick Jonas and Sophie Turner's reactions to Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes not kissing in their set was fucking hilarious. Let's face it, I think anything involving Sophie is hilarious—did you guys see her pasta related Instagram story? Ahahahaha. She's amazing.**

 **Drop a review, let me know what you think, love you lots x**


	11. K: Kiss Me

**Hey, guys! Before getting into it, I want to recommend some of my favourite songs as of late... _Undrunk_ by Fletcher. _Dance Monkey_ by Tones and I. And then of course _Kill My Mind_ by the beautiful Louis Tomlinson and _Lights Up_ by the just as beautiful Harry Styles, although the _Lights Up_ music video was an experience and a half, especially while high. _Pretending_ and _Honest_ by Mali Koa are just beautiful. Then _Promise Me_ by Badflowers, which...Made my heart hurt when I heard the song, and then when I watched the video, I cried for the next hour. Yeah. I just wanted to share some happy things, since my note down the end isn't as happy, I guess. Anyway. On with the story x**

 **K : _Kiss Me_ \- Ed Sheeran**  
 **Requested by _Deadmencurlyshoes_**

 _And your heart's against my chest, your lips pressed to my neck_  
 _I'm falling for your eyes, but they don't know me yet_  
 _And with a feeling I'll forget, I'm in love now_  
 _Kiss me like you wanna be loved_  
 _You wanna be loved_  
 _You wanna be loved_  
 _This feels like falling in love_  
 _Falling in love_  
 _We're falling in love_

The fire was burning and getting bigger as people threw wood. Music was coming loudly from the band who was getting drunker as the night went on and laughing and shouting came from the village people who were dancing around the fire. The young children were closest to the fire, keeping the warmest, and they were laughing and playing, throwing handfuls of snow at each other. Max Lightwood was pulling at the pigtails that Rosa Santiago's thick hair were twined into, and she let out a giggle and a shriek as she took off running toward where her friends were building a snowman.

Isabelle Lightwood was drunk and her hair was a little messy, tumbling down her back over the thick red cape she was wearing that she should wrap around herself to keep herself warm from the bite of the winter air that got even colder up high on the mountain where their village was. But she let her cape fall open, exposing the dress she was wearing underneath with the laced corset only tied _most_ of the way up, teasing people as she danced. Simon Lewis, her intended, was dancing with her, a whole lot more awkward than she was, but she obviously loved every moment of it, laughing and kissing him openly.

There were a line of men who were standing further back from the fire, almost in the shadows alongside the centre of the village where the celebration was happening, their faces only lit from the lanterns that were hanging outside their homes. Above them, along the wooden balconies, there were older men and woman who were watching the celebrations, wrapped in bearskin rugs and thick blankets made from sheep wool.

The further away from the fire, the more quiet the village got, and the more the darkness billowed. Almost the whole village was at the celebration of the first day of Spring—even though their homes were still blanketed in snow, with smoke steadily coming from the chimneys of all the wooden cabins—the days were getting a little bit longer now. The snow was there almost the whole year round, the ice of their wells only began breaking right through in the middle of summer, and even then, it was only for a few weeks at a time. Near the edges of the village was where there was more light, although it was still nowhere near as bright as the fire that was burning at the centre.

Right beside the the huge wooden fence that completely surrounded their village to ward off attacks from animals looking for an easy feed was the barn, where the horses were kept. There was muted light spilling out onto the snowy pathway outside the barn, coming from the lanterns that were hanging inside to keep the horses in a warm, yellow glow. There was a small room at the front, which kept the feed and ropes and equipment for the horses, and then there was the main stable, with ten healthy horses that were happily munching hay and feed in their stalls. At the back of the stable were steps that lead up to the loft, where the hay was piled.

The music and singing and laughing couldn't be heard quite as loudly, given there were several cabins made of thick logs as well as the thick wooden walls of the stable blocking out the noise. There was a lantern that was hanging off a rusty wire hook at the bottom of the stairs, and another one right at the top. The loft was dimly lit, but the flame in the lantern, off-setting the yellow hay was creating a warm, golden glow in under the slanted roof, despite the snow that was piling against the glass of the window. The stable was quite warm in the first place, given the horses that were held downstairs, as well as the few dogs and cats they sought out the heat against the cold bite of the night, and the loft itself was warmer, given the heat floated upward.

"What if he says no?" Clarissa Morgensterns voice was quiet, muffled from where she had her face pressed against the thin material of Jace's shirt, the rough, animal hide vest pushed open to make it more comfortable for her.

"He won't say no," Jace Herondale murmured, tightened the arm that was wrapped around Clary's waist. She was wearing a blue dress, made of thick material, that kept her warm in the cold days and nights that ran almost all year round in their mountainside village. The front of the dress dipped lower, laced up over her cleavage and showing a hint of her white undergarments around her chest, and there was a thick green cape that she usually had tied around her shoulders spread out over their waists and legs, giving them some more warmth.

"But what if he does?" Clary whispered, tipping her head backwards to look up at him. Jace took in a deep breath, turning his head where it was laying back on the soft hay and looking directly down at her.

"Then we'll leave," he said decisively. "We'll go somewhere far away." Clary's green eyes widened at his statement, even though it was something that they had talked about since they were fourteen and her father, Valentine Morgenstern, had said that he didn't approve of what was happening between them.

Their village was small.

Reputations and gossip shrouded everyone.

Jace was left without his parents when he was young; his mother was a whore and took off with one of the travelling gypsies that came through when he was just a baby and was never seen again, and his father was an alcoholic who ventured outside the village gates one night after having far too much drink and was attacked by wolves. He was taken in by the stable master, living in the stable and looking after the horses, cleaning up the stable and nursing the animals back to health when they were sick. As he got older, he also learnt a lot from the black smith as well, which helped him earn his way.

But a boy who had parents with terrible reputations carried that on his shoulders as he grew, and he had always been marred by this as he had grown. He was looked down on by almost everyone in the village.

Clary was daughter of the towns head carpenter, she was sort of like the golden girl, and her parents had talked about her being betrothed to Sebastian Verlac, the son of the preacher, for as long as she could remember. Nothing was in cement yet, but it was rumored to be coming soon.

But Clary had been in love with Jace since he had made her a crude metal bracelet when she was twelve, one of the first things he made when he was learning from the black smith.

"We'll run away and we'll find somewhere else to call home," Jace whispered, leaving gentle kisses over her forehead. "We'll take Sansa and Erik—" Sansa was Clary's horse and Erik was Jace's scraggly dog. "—And we'll go and find some village at the bottom of the mountain, maybe somewhere that doesn't have snow the whole year round. Where there's flowers and green grass and sun that actually warms your skin and streams that are warm enough to walk through." Clary was smiling at the picture Jace was painting in her head. "We'll take what we've got saved and we'll work hard and get ourselves a little cottage, where you can give me babies."

"Oh," Clary let out a laugh, the sound tinkling pleasantly in the enclosed space. "So you want babies _plural_ now, do you?"

"As many as you'll give me," Jace replied with a grin. Clary rolled her eyes but she was smiling and Jace's lips came down on hers softly. He twisted his body around so that it was hovering over her, his muscular one completely covering her petite one. The kiss began gentle, close mouthed, but then it slowly turned into something else more heated, with fingers pulling at the laces of Clary's dress and Jace's shirt being pulled up, over his head.

They made love in the warmth of the loft, soft noises filling the room as they exchanged kisses and whispered words smoothing over one anothers bodies.

 **Alright, so, obviously I didn't update last month. My bad. I'm in a pretty shitty spot, to be honest, mentally and physically and I've just got a lot going on right now. I'm still dealing with the abrupt loss of a family member and the fall out of that on my family and recently my husband has had a colleague take his life, which has brought up a lot for him. We're going to be okay, we're dealing with things, but I just need to take a breath right now. When I am in front of my computer and I'm actually focused enough to write, I'm not sticking to the schedules that I had before and I'm just writing what I really feel like which unfortunately hasn't been these stories. So I'm just...Gonna take a step back for a bit.**

 **You guys are all beautiful, and I'll be back soon, I just need a bit of a breather to re-centre myself.**

 **Since updating last, it has been World Coming Out Day and World Mental Health Day and I just wanted to say to anyone dealing with mental health issues and anyone in the LGBTQ+ community, whether you are out and loud or still processing things internally, you are all beautiful and deserve love and kindness. Just because I'm going to be away for a little bit, doesn't mean I'm unreachable, feel free to message me on my socials or on here if anyone ever wants to just chat, even if it's just about movies or songs, we all need to look after ourselves first, and then one another.**

 **Much love xx**

 **Tumblr: SereneCalamity**  
 **Twitter: CalamitySerene**


	12. L: Lovesick

**Hey, beauties :)**

 **L : _Lovesick_ by Banks**  
 **Requested by _Guest_**

 _Please call me your baby, baby, baby_  
 _Look how long that you have kept me waiting_  
 _I'm all in_  
 _Look at all that I have given_  
 _Ooh, I knew your love before I kissed you_  
 _And now you have only made me miss you_  
 _Come get me_  
 _Come love me_  
 _Baby, come love me_

 _Ooh-ah, 'cause I'm lovesick_  
 _I ain't even ashamed, ah-ah_  
 _And I'm hard up for some time in your sheets, ah-ah_  
 _Would you been down to spend all your time with me? Ah-ah_  
 _'Cause I'm lovesick_

Clarissa Morgenstern had been around dangerous men her whole life. She had been around men who had one face for the public and then one face for the ones that they loved. She had been around men who just had one face and that was a cold, uncaring face. She had been around men who said that they cared about her and had then betrayed her. She had been around men who couldn't say that they loved her but showed it in what they did.

She had been fifteen years old when Jace Herondale had showed up and pledged his allegiance to the _Devils Disciples_. He was three years older than her, the same age as her older brother, Jonathan Morgenstern, who had been sworn into the _Devils Disciples_ since he was sixteen.

At first glance, he wasn't really anything different from the others in the club. That wasn't to say he wasn't special, because Clary loved all of the men in the motorcycle club, because they were a family to her, given her father was the president. But there hadn't been something that had instantly made her fall in love.

No, that had come in time.

Like in the way that he covered for her when she had snuck out with her friends and gotten completely plastered to the point where she could barely move without groaning and keeling over.

And the way that he understood her need for independence when she wanted to deal with a boy from school who really wasn't good at accepting no for an answer.

And then in the way that he would take her out for long rides on the back of his bike, up the high roads alongside the beach, and park at a look out, and let her talk for hours on end about everything and nothing.

She fell in love with Jace by the time that she was sixteen, but as the princess of the MC—the daughter of Valentine Morgenstern—she was off limits. She was part of their extended family and she came to the parties and she knew a lot more about the club than a lot of the other woman attached and she helped her mother when it came to stitching them up when the brothers got injuries.

But it was still a rule—and _not_ an unspoken one—that she was _not_ to be touched. Sometimes it was wondered who Valentine would ever consider to be good enough for his daughter, given the brothers were the ones that she had grown up with and who would willingly throw their lives down for her without question, but that wasn't something that anyone dared to ask him.

Clary wasn't sure what Jace saw when he looked at her, but she had a feeling that it was something along the lines of a little sister. He had gotten close to Jonathan throughout the year that he was a prospect for the _Devils Disciples_ and once he became a fully fledged member, they were best friends. She guessed that he kind of _did_ act like an older brother to her, and maybe if she wasn't completely head over heels in love, she would just see him as another family member, like she did with the other brothers.

Then he went away for three years for possession of drugs and unregistered guns, taking the fall for Jonathan and Alexander Lightwood, since they were already on their second strike, and they would have been likely to do a lot more time than them.

Jace was protected on the inside—the _Devils Disciples_ had a lot of people loyal to them and who owed them favours—and every week he had his brothers visiting him, along with Isabelle Lightwood, Jocelyn Morgenstern and Clary. They alternated coming to visit him, given he was locked up almost a three hour drive away, making it a six hour round trip.

Clary had just turned twenty before he was released, and he was taken aback by her when she walked into the clubhouse the night after he got back. When he had seen her every couple of weeks when he was in prison, she had been wearing clothes that covered her up a bit and didn't wear much make up. That was expected, though, because generally the women who came in tried to keep a low profile, not wanting to attract any unnecessary attention.

She looked older and she definitely _acted_ older.

She also cornered him when he went outside for a cigarette—she had gotten bolder as well.

Or maybe just impatient.

"I'm done with this," she told him, jutting her chin forward. She was wearing tight jeans and a singlet that showed off her cleavage and tiny waist and she had her eyes narrowed as she watched him.

"Done with what?" Jace asked, even though he had a pretty damn good idea given she was advancing on him with a predatory look in her eyes.

"I've been fucking pining over you since I was sixteen and waiting for you to make a move. I'm done with that," she reached up and put her hands on his shoulders. Jace stared down at her, his lips pulling upward in an amused smirk.

"If you haven't noticed...I've been kind of busy for the past few years," Jace replied, but the smile was gone as he felt her soft body against his and his eyes narrowed in on her rosebud lips.

"You busy now?" She asked with a pointed arch of her eyebrow.

"Nope," Jace shook his head and Clary grinned before reaching up and bringing their mouths together. The kiss was hot and fast and it felt as though Clary was trying to climb inside his skin with the way she was clawing at his shoulders. Jace could feel the years of impatience rolling off her and it surprised him when he was hit with an intense longing in the pit of his stomach. Jace pulled back from Clary when he needed to breathe, and there was an annoyed whimper from Clary.

"You better fucking kiss me again," Clary grumbled, her arms coming back up to wrap around his neck. Jace let out a laugh and his hands went down to her hips, gripping them firmly.

"You know your dad is going to make me bleed for this, right?" He informed her.

"You can handle it," Clary said with a smirk, before she all but climbed him to get another taste of his mouth.

 **So obviously it's been a while, and there's a lot of songs that I haven't recommended! I've just decided to log into that website thing that shows your top tracks, so these are my short term top ten. 1) _She_ \- Harry Styles. 2) _Radio_ \- Lana Del Rey. 3) _Living Proof_ \- Camila Cabello. 4) _Hazel_ \- Carlie Hanson. 5) _September Song_ \- JP Cooper. 6) _We Made It_ \- Louis Tomlinson. 7) _All My Friends_ \- AJ Mitchell. 8) _The Sound_ \- The 1975. 9) _Wrong Direction_ \- Hailee Steinfield. 10) _Dazed & Confused_ \- Ruel. Bonus song would be _You Should Be Sad_ by Halsey, which is fucking amazing, so far my second favourite of the released tracks from Manic.**

 **There's been a lot of amazing TV shows that have recently come out; _The Witcher/His Dark Materials/Watchmen/The Mandalorian_. These are all amazing, incredible acting, the sets and scenery and costume design is just A+. Also _Spinning Out_ was really good, I absolutely loved Mandy and Marcus. I love when there are strong side characters that I can fall in love with, and it had good story lines.**

 **I've also been to a couple of concerts that were great; Greta Van Fleet, Ruel, Shawn Mendes and Khlaid. All bloody brilliant.**

 **Now. I don't want to say much about how shit 2020 has been because we're only 14 days in and holy shit, I feel like there's a lot going on. A fucking lot. For me, what hits closest to home is Australia on fire. On the fifth of January our skies turned an apocalyptic orange because the winds changed and the smoke reached us here in New Zealand. I just want to say to everyone who is dealing with anything right now—it doesn't matter how big or small—I love you and you're not alone x**

 **Tumblr: SereneCalamity**  
 **Twitter: CalamitySerene**


	13. M: Make You Feel My Love

**Hey, pretties. I just feel the need to just give a trigger warning for discussions of depression in this one.**

 **M : _Make You Feel My Love_ \- Adele**  
 **Requested by _Juls2820_**

 _The storms are raging on the rolling sea_  
 _And on the highway of regret_  
 _The winds of change are blowing wild and free_  
 _You ain't seen nothing like me yet_

 _I could make you happy, make your dreams come true_  
 _There's nothing that I wouldn't do_  
 _Go to the ends of this Earth for you_  
 _To make you feel my love, oh yes_  
 _To make you feel my love_

Jace Herondale took in a deep breath as he walked to the door of the conservatory that had been converted into his wife's studio a year ago. He could feel the heat from the room even before he pushed the door the whole way open, the multiple windows in the room catching the afternoon sun. Jace blinked as he looked around, jiggling his eighteen month old daughter in his arm as he took in the studio.

There were a couple of half finished canvases, paintings that hadn't been touched in months, and there were rows of paints and supplies that were organized almost perfectly in the shelves against the room.

Jace usually loved it when things were in their proper places.

But it just went to show how long Clary hadn't been in this room.

He remembered coming in here and cleaning up one night when Embry Herondale had been determined not to go to sleep and he was looking for something to distract himself with.

That was nearly four months ago.

He wished he had never come in here and tidied up, because it had never looked this tidy before.

It just didn't feel right.

There was a coo from Embry and she tightened her little fist in it's grip of her shirt and Jace shifted his attention down to his daughter. She blinked up at him with wide green eyes that looked so much like her mothers it made his heart hurt a little. She was too young to understand what was going on, but she knew that _something_ was wrong.

She buried her head in his chest and Jace rubbed his hand up and down her back softly before backing out of the room.

It was later that evening that Jace approached Clary. She had gotten out of bed at around one that afternoon, which Jace viewed as an improvement because a few weeks ago, she wasn't getting out of bed at all, except to go to the bathroom. She showered, although her hair was still dry when she came downstairs to look in the cupboard. Jace offered to make her something; he began listing things almost desperately, ranging from eggs to mashed potato and sausages, but Clary just shook her head listlessly and picked up an apple and wandered back upstairs.

When Jace sat down on the side of the bed at six o'clock that evening, the apple had a few small bites missing but was otherwise still whole on the bedside table beside Clary. She had the duvet pulled all the way up to her chin and her head buried into the pillow, but her eyes were still half open.

"Baby?" Jace's voice was quiet, soft, not wanting her to be put on his edge. She didn't acknowledge him, but Jace knew she was listening. "Clary..." his voice caught in his throat, and he watched as she slowly blinked, her eyes still looking toward the window across the room. Even though it was getting dark outside and it was spitting, with rain splatters hitting the window, Clary hadn't pulled the curtains. "Clary, you need to see someone." He waited to see if she would react, but she just kept staring ahead. Jace took in a deep breath through his nose and shifted a little closer, reaching out and resting his hand on her shoulder, through the thick duvet. "Baby, _I_ need you to see someone. Embry needs you to see someone." Clary didn't say anything for a long time, but Jace just waited, knowing that he needed to give her time.

She didn't verbally reply, but after a few more minutes passed, he saw a tear slide down her cheek. She didn't move to brush it away, so Jace moved his own hand, from her shoulder and down to her face, his thumb gently swiping the tear away.

Then another slid down her cheek, until they wouldn't stop falling, and Jace lifted up the duvet and climbed in next to her. Clary didn't roll over to cuddle him like she would have before, but as he wrapped his arms around her, he felt her fingers curl around the arm that he barred over her chest, and her sobs wracked her body.

All Jace could do was hold her.

Jace didn't understand what was happening with Clary.

Well, he understood _what_ it was, he knew that she was suffering from depression, but he knew that there was a lot that he didn't understand. At first, he hadn't even realized that she had slipped from grief into depression until Magnus Bane had gently mentioned something to him.

Something had been off after Embry had been born, and Jace had been to a few of her doctors appointments where the words 'post-natal depression' had been mentioned, but with a lot of help from her mother and her best friends, Isabelle Lightwood and Maia Roberts, and support from her husband, she seemed to even out after a few months.

But then Jocelyn Morgenstern had died in a fatal car crash. Her partner, Luke Garroway, had also been killed. Two people who had raised Clary for as long as she could remember and especially her mother, who she had such a strong relationship with, being torn abruptly away from her had thrown Clary through a loop. She had fallen apart when they got the phone call from the hospital, her screams waking Embry from where she was sleeping in the next room. Jace had been shocked to the core—being raised without a mother, Jocelyn had filled that void—but he had needed to push that to the side to be there for Clary.

That was six months ago.

Clary seemed to be able to hold herself together for the first two months, although she was understandably shaky. But Jace began to notice things, like how he would walk in on Clary just staring out the window, or how she would shower for almost half an hour, or how she wouldn't react to Embry crying, or how she just didn't seem to have the energy to brush her hair.

He was worried, and he didn't know what to do, and so he was talking to his cousin Alexander Lightwood after he had come home from work to Clary sitting on the couch, staring blankly at the switched off TV, while Embry was in her play pen, crying so loudly that Jace had been able to hear from the driveway outside. Magnus had murmured that it sounded like depression, something that he had suffered with a lot as a teenager, when he was struggling to come to terms with his sexuality. He had said that he and Isabelle had been trying to talk to Clary, but it had gotten to the point where she wasn't even replying to their texts or voice messages, and she made excuses when they tried to come over.

Jace didn't know what to do.

He loved her.

Other than Embry, Clary was the most important person in the whole world to him.

She was important, she was brilliant, she was talented, she was gorgeous, and while he knew that she was hurting, Jace also knew that Jocelyn would never wanted Clary to suffer in the way that she was now.

But he didn't know how to snap her out of it.

He didn't know if it _was_ something that she could snap out of.

He talked to Magnus about it, he talked to Clary's grandmother—Charlotte Branwell—about it, he looked up things online, he even went and saw a psychologist.

He wanted to repeat to her over and over again that he needed her, that Embry needed her, that there was no way that the two of them were going to be okay without her, but that just sounded selfish as he repeated it back in his head, and that made him feel horrible. Now wasn't the time to be thinking about himself, he needed to think about _Clary_ and what she needed.

He gave her space, but after speaking with a psychologist for the third time, he knew that she needed to speak to someone who was a lot more experienced in this area than he was.

At first, Jace didn't think it was working.

He drove her to and from the appointments because he didn't trust her driving, given she was still barely eating anything and looked so pale and gaunt that he was worried she was going to pass out if she exerted herself to much. After the first three sessions, nothing was different.

Magnus told him to be patient.

Isabelle told him that they were all in this together, they were all there to support Jace, Clary and Embry as a unit.

After the fifth session and her first _group_ therapy session, Jace started to push her to go outside with Embry. They didn't go into crowded areas, and they were never out for very long, but they went to the park and Embry fed the ducks, and Clary didn't feel quite as distant as she did before. Her hands bumped against her side as they walked, not reaching for his, but there was a small upturn of the corner of her lips when Embry pointed at one of the birds and announced ' _fuck_!" as she tried to pronounce 'duck'.

Nearly a month later, Isabelle and Maia came over and took Clary out for breakfast. They kept it short, going to a quiet cafe and bringing her home after an hour and a half, but her eyes didn't look as dim as they used to.

Two months later, Jace smelt the sharp scent of paint that he had been missing for the past seven or eight months, and he almost cried. He tried to be as quiet as possible as he approached the end room, and even though the room wasn't the complete chaos that it used to be, there were a few paints scattered around, two paintbrushes laying in the little sink they had put into the corner and a canvas with a few swipes of colours in the corner—it looked as though it was the beginning of a few flowers.

A few weeks after that, Clary was cooking dinner in the kitchen, with Embry resting on her hip. Her hair was in a thick braid, she was wearing a pair of denim cut off shorts that showed off her long legs and a colourful shirt. Embry was giggling and had her fingers twisted in Clary's hair, and there was an upbeat song playing.

Jace came into the kitchen and put his arms around both of his girls. Embry squealed as she spotted her dad and Clary's body relaxed against him, letting him take her weight and finding comfort in the heat of his body.

"I love you," Jace murmured, his chest feeling heavy with emotion as he spoke into Clary's hair. He loved her in every shape or form, no matter what she was going through, and he needed her to know that. "I love you _so much_ ," he told her, his voice catching a little. He felt Clary's body shake a little, and he tightened his grip around her. Embry nuzzled into her mothers shoulder, falling quiet, letting the moment circle around them all, safe in Jace's warm embrace.

"I love you too," Clary whispered.

 **So this was a bit...Harder for me to write. But it was also cathartic, in a way. I hope you guys enjoyed it x**


	14. N: Next Contestant

**So. Okay. This was one of the first ones I wrote when I began this series again, so it was written...Maybe a year ago, and I sort of don't like this anymore...I just wanted to say sorry for the dip in quality here.**

 **N : _Next Contestant_ \- Nickleback**  
 **Song Requested by _AFourAddict_**  
 **Story Idea by _reineLVIII_**

 _Is that your hand on my girlfriend?  
_ _Is that your hand?  
_ _I wish you'd do it again  
_ _I'll watch you leave here limping  
_ _I wish you'd do it again  
_ _I'll watch you leave here limping  
_ _There goes the next contestant_

When she was at work, Clarissa Morgenstern was beautiful but unassuming. She would usually wear a long sleeved blouse—varying colours but all of them muted—and a high waisted skirt that showed off her slim waist but that would go all the way to her knee, very modest. Even in summer, she might wear a sleeveless shirt, but there would always be a thin cardigan over top, her shoulders and arms never exposed. She barely wore any make up and there were only wore a single stud in each ear.

She was sweet and she had a kind smile, and she was loved by every kid who approached her section of the library. Parents loved her as well, given she was more than happy for them to drop off their kids for an afternoon while they went and did the grocery shopping, and she would keep an close eye on them, reading to them and being gentle as she chided them to keep quiet.

Jace Herondale didn't have to worry about Clary when she was at work, except for the one male worker at the library, Daniel Quinn, who gave her long looks, but then he did that with most of the women that worked there.

It was _outside_ of work where things would get a little...Complicated.

Clary had worked at the library for the past two and a half years and she fit in well there. She had moved to the small city of Idris after living in New York for a few years while she had been going through University, which was where she she had met Jace. He had met her when she had been in a similar state to what she was when she worked each day, and he had thought she was gorgeous.

Then she had reached up to reach for a book in the University library that was on the top shelf, and her shirt had hitched upward and he had seen the colourful tattoo along the left side of her lower back, curling over her hip and he had been hit with the realization that there was a lot more to the girl than met the eye.

She might have been studying English literature, which seemed like a stuffy subject, but she was nowhere near boring.

The reason she wore long sleeved shirts was because she had colourful tattoo's winding up both of her arms and across her back. The reason she wore skirts down to her knees or long pants, was because up her right thigh, ending just an inch or so above her knee, were bright flowers and dermal piercings glinting from the centre. She may only wear one stud in each ear at work, but she had three holes at the bottom of each ear, a tragus piercing in the right and an industrial bar that went through her left. Her nipples were both pierced as well, although that wasn't something that anyone but Jace saw. And she may wear nude make up to work, maybe venturing into darker pink lipstick occasionally, but that was nothing compared to the bright reds and the deep purples that she would wear in the weekends, and the heavy, dark eye makeup and glittering highlighter that showed off her cheekbones.

It turned out that her best friend, Simon Lewis, was part of an up and coming rock band, and she had helped them out a lot with their art work for their posters and album covers, and she was pretty into their scenes as well, going to clubs and bars when they were preforming.

And that was where things got complicated.

Jace would never tell Clary what to wear or what not to wear when they went out to clubs or to the concerts that were slowly getting bigger and bigger for Simon and his band.

He would never tell her how to act or how not to act.

He would never want her to stop dancing and screaming out the lyrics to every single one of Simon's songs and throwing her arms in the air and having fun because he loved all of those moments. He loved her having fun and letting her inhibitions lower and so completely full of life.

But he hated the way people would react to her.

Mainly men, but there had been a few persistent women that he had run into over the years.

Jace was a bit over protective by nature—a fact that could be easily backed up by his younger cousin that he had grown up with, Isabelle Lightwood—and maybe just a tad on the possessive side.

But he was pretty sure that even if it _wasn't_ in his nature, it would still flare up when guys would move up to his girls side to try and dance with her. Some of them were drunk and just blatantly tried to grope her around the waist as she pushed her way to the front of the gigs. They would leer down at her tiny figure and take in the tight leather skirt she was wearing and the ripped band shirt and the tattoos and the bright red lips and they were suddenly tripping over themselves, desperate for a taste.

Jace didn't hesitate before grabbing them by the scruff of their shirt and sending them sprawling into the crowd.

Sometimes they came back, acting as though they stood a chance up against Jace in their drunken stupor, and they departed _very_ quickly after that, with bloody noses and one even with a broken finger.

Then there were the ones that were still pretty sober, and would try to actually talk to Clary or buy her a drink. Jace didn't dance, which was why Clary was usually on the dance floor by herself, but he was always close by, keeping an eye on things. He would see her politely decline and try to focus back on the music. Sometimes that worked.

Sometimes Jace pushed his way through the crowd and _made_ it work.

Clary once made a joke about how she should just get Simon to set up a little area that was cordoned off from the public for her to dance and sing in, and Isabelle and Maia Roberts when they came to the gig.

 _She_ was joking.

Jace seriously considered the logistics of it before Alexander Lightwood had snorted and said that would just make Clary look even more desirable, putting her on a pedestal like that, literally making her seem like forbidden fruit.

So Jace just settled for dealing with contestant after contestant as they came for his girl.

He kissed her hard when she was in her concert gear, tattoos on display and green eyes flashing and playful.

He kissed her harder when she was in jeans and a loose tee-shirt, looking so sweet he wanted to eat her up, to make sure that she knew he loved her in every phase of herself; from the sexy, tattooed party girl, to the understated, beautiful librarian, to the innocent, wide eyed twenty-five year old who loved to sing along with Disney movies.

He could deal with _them_ as long as he had _her_.

 **1) _Wrong Direction_ \- Hailee Steinfield. 2) _Walls_ \- Louis Tomlinson. 3) _Alanis' Interlude_ \- Halsey and Alanis Morissette. 4) _See You Again_ \- Carrie Underwood. 5) _Brooklyn Baby_ \- Lana Del Rey. 6) _Blood_ \- In This Moment. 7) _Casual Sabotage_ \- Yungblud. 8) _She_ \- Harry Styles. 9) _Living Proof_ \- Camila Cabello. 10) _Monsters_ \- James Blunt.**

 **My husbands favourites change all the time, but he has said that today the ones he played the most are _Adore You_ by Harry Styles and _First Man_ by Camila Cabello. I think my playing of the HS2 album on repeat has gotten to him, and he wasn't too big of a fan of _First Man_ by Camila, probably because I played it so much when the song first came out, it always just made me so emotional. After her Grammy performance last night, though, he was an absolute wreck, and he said he played it all the way to work, so I think he's finally on board with that song!**

 **We had a _How To Train Your Dragon_ binge in the weekend, which was amazing, and I've just started a new showed called _Reprisal_ , which seems pretty good.**

 **Also keep in mind, I am sending you guys PM's in response to your reviews! Please don't think I'm ignoring you guys! I absolutely appreciate all your beautiful words and support, just currently has the alerts turned off for any PM's, which is incredibly frustrating, so you're just not getting alerted by them when I send one!**

 **Much love xx**


	15. O: Only Us

**Hey, pretties :)**

 **O : _Only Us_ \- Ben Platt and Laura Dreyfuss ( _Dear Evan Hansen_ Soundtrack)**  
 **Requested by _DemGrayEyesDoh_ and _ThePotatoSacksNextDoor_**

 _So what if it's us?_  
 _What if it's us_  
 _And only us_  
 _And what came before won't count anymore or matter?_  
 _Can we try that?_

 _What if it's you_  
 _And what if it's me_  
 _And what if that's all that we need it to be_  
 _And the rest of the world falls away?_  
 _What do you say?_

Valentine Morgenstern became Vice President of the United States in 2008. At the inaugural balls, he danced with his wife of almost twenty years, Jocelyn Morgenstern, and he was also accompanied by his seventeen year old son, Jonathan Morgenstern, and thirteen year old daughter, Clarissa Morgenstern. It wasn't the first time the family had been in the public eye, given Valentine had been the State Senator of Massachusetts for the past three years, but now it was the _world_ with their eyes on them.

Jonathan was away at boarding school most of the time, and once he finished boarding school, he ended up moving to Italy to study. While he had a couple of secret service people with him pretty much all the time, he flew under the radar and could get away with living a reasonably normal life.

Clary, however, attended a private, all girls school just outside of Washington, and was home every weekend and through the holidays, and so she was very much in the public eye. She attended most events at her father and mothers side, and she quite often had events that she attended with just her mother. There were even some events where she was the token Morgenstern in attendance, at luncheons or at events for youth or charity fundraisers that weren't quite at the level that required either of her parents to be in attendance.

She was the golden girl.

She held herself with poise and grace and she never put a foot out of turn.

She had a sweet smile and a charming face—big, green eyes and long, red hair that fell in ringlets down her back.

She was respectful and she was intelligent.

She could hold a conversation with adults and she was good with kids.

She was a sweetheart, and was often dubbed that way by the press.

Clary never expressed any resentment toward the way she had almost every move scrutinized and she never acted as though the wide berth that she got from most of the students at her school bothered her.

She had two close friends, Simon Lewis, whose mother was one of her fathers lawyers, and Maia Roberts, whose family had been close to hers for as long as she had been alive. She didn't have many other friends though, because although there was some outward glimmer to being friends with the vice presidents daughter, in all honesty, it wasn't as glamorous as some people thought.

Mainly, she never had time to hang out, because her weekends were completely free, and if she _did_ have time, the things that she could do were limited, and they had escorts almost at all times.

Her father was re-elected as vice president when his running mate won again, which meant another four years in office. There was talk about Clary going away to a finishing school for her last two years of schooling, but Clary was adamant about not leaving home. She wanted to stay with her parents and with her best friends and at her school. So she stayed, and her public duties just increased. The conferences and charity events that she was going to were becoming more frequent and also more wide spread, to the point where she was needing to stay away from her heavily protected home and school for full nights or weekends at a time.

So her father hired her more escorts, including a few younger people, because he wanted her to have someone around that was closer to her in age that she felt comfortable around and who could keep her company while she was at the events, since she refused to subject Maia and Simon to them. One of them was Isabelle Lightwood, who was sort of like her personal assistant, but quickly became her closest confidant. The other was Jace Herondale, who had just completed a tour in the army and had just recently joined the secret service.

Things got...Complicated.

It didn't happen quickly.

It happened slowly, taking place over months and months of late nights and long drives and Jace seeing a side of Clary that she kept very much hidden, even from her parents. Even from Isabelle, because at the end of the day, she worked for her parents, that's who was paying her bills, and so even though Clary got on with her, she was careful not to say too much.

She was careful around Jace for a long time as well, until Jace was wondering why she was taking so long in the bathroom at a charity event and he had started worrying. He had gone in and broken down the only stall door that was locked and found her on the ground, huddled against the wall, in the dress that probably cost half a year of his salary, hyperventilating.

Only Simon and Maia knew about the panic attacks that she got when she was left to fend for herself at events like this.

Only Simon and Maia knew how much she hated being in the public eye and having every single one of her moves scrutinized.

Only Simon and Maia knew that she would never, _ever_ tell her parents about this because she loved her father and she knew that he absolutely loved his career, and she didn't want to be the reason that he had to give it up.

But now, Jace knew.

And he protected her.

Not just in the way that he had been protecting her before—making sure that people didn't get too close, making sure that the room was safe before she came in, making sure that there was always a safe exit. No, now he also made sure that she didn't stay at an event for longer than she could handle. He made sure that she didn't feel too crowded or pressured. He made sure that she got time alone between obligations to take a breather and center herself again. He was protecting her emotionally and mentally, as well as physically, and Clary couldn't be more grateful.

Slowly, but steadily, she fell for him.

It wasn't hard, given he was there at almost every waking moment.

And even though Jace was reserved and didn't say much, she saw the way his eyes gentled when he looked at her and on the few times that he had touched her, it was soft.

But there was one big problem.

His job. Or, more specifically, her father.

Jace was employed by Valentine to protect his daughter, one of the most important people in his life, and it would be a complete breach of trust and also of a violation of his contract if anything happened between them.

So even though he was there for her in every sense of the word, nothing more happened.

Even when Clary got so drunk one night—the first time that she had ever gotten drunk, given how collected she always had to act—and told him that she was pretty sure she loved him. Jace was driving her back from the apartment where Simon's eighteenth birthday had taken place, and he had just pulled into the garage. He got out of the car and was helping her out of the back and she kissed him. Her eyes were glazed and she could barely stand up and Jace had completely frozen when the girl had reached up and pressed a kiss to his mouth. When she pulled back, she mumbled that she thought that she loved him, and then she keeled over and threw up all over the concrete floor of the garage.

Jace thought that she was too drunk to remember what had happened, but she brought it up a few weeks later. Obviously she had been thinking about it, because she had a whole spiel worked out, including how she was going to be nineteen soon and her fathers term was nearly up and so he didn't need to be her agent anymore.

'Nearly up' was nine months away, though.

Jace couldn't keep a secret like that for nine months.

He loved his job and he respected his employer.

He also knew that Clary was young and despite everything that she had been exposed to in her life, she was still naive in a lot of ways.

Jace had resigned and was gone within a week, leaving Clary heart broken.

He left her a letter, and in it, he explained why he had to go.

He also told her that he _knew_ he loved her, and maybe things could be different in a few years time, after she had gotten a chance to go out into the world and experience things and find out what made her happy.

Clary didn't say anything to her parents or to Simon or Maia—not about Jace. But a few weeks after he was gone, she went and spoke with her father, and said that as soon as she graduated, she wanted to go to Italy to spend time with Jonathan. Valentine had been taken aback, and said that he would prefer if she stayed around until his vice presidency ended, which would be a couple months after she graduated.

For once in her life, Clary stayed strong.

She said that she wanted to go _right_ after she graduated.

She reiterated that she had never asked for anything, even if her voice was soft as she said it, but it had done the trick. Even though both Valentine and Jocelyn were worried about her, because she had never been off on her own before, but they trusted that she would be protected with their security and Isabelle, and also with her brother, and they gave her permission to leave.

Two days after she graduated, she got on a private plane and flew to Italy to meet her brother.

She traveled with him—and Simon also flew out for a few weeks at a time—for just over a year. Their security loosened up as time went by, because after the vice presidency, her father stepped back from the political limelight, wanting to take some time with his wife and enjoy a quieter life for a short while. Clary enrolled in a university in New York, and just before she started, Valentine and Jocelyn joined them for three weeks in Australia.

She dated a couple of boys.

She got drunk a few times.

She tried different food and listened to different music.

She met people she never would have before.

She become more comfortable in her skin and got used to asking for what she wanted rather than just taking whatever she was given.

She grew—a hell of a lot more than she ever had before.

It was two months after she started her course that she was coming down the steps at the front of the university when she saw him. She was with Maia, who had course two of the same days as Clary, and Kaelie Whitewillow, a girl who was taking some of the same classes as Clary. Jace watched her come down the steps, and he was taken aback by just how different she looked.

Her hair was shorter, she was wearing bolder make up and brighter coloured clothes. She was smiling widely and she looked happier than he had ever seen her. She had a bag slung over her shoulder and she had a few books under her other arm. Jace glanced around but he couldn't see anyone watching her—and he had a skilled eye, if there was any guards or officers keeping an eye on her then he would have seen them. He wasn't sure what she had said to her father to let her out on her own, given how protective he was of her, but then again, he wasn't vice president anymore.

"Clary," Maia said softly, and she reached out for Clary's arm. Clary looked over her expectantly with a wide smile and then Maia nodded over to where Jace was standing. Clary saw him and her smile faltered, obviously surprised to see him there. He stayed where he was, letting her take him in.

He was wearing jeans and a henley—casual clothes, which she had never seen him in—and he had let his hair grow a little longer, not cropped close to his skull like it had been before. She watched her green eyes flick over him and then raise to meet his.

And then she smiled.

Unbridled and unembarrassed and it was beautiful.

She left her friends standing at the bottom of the stairs and came over to him.

She even walked differently, with her held a little higher and a bit of a bounce in her step. She reached him and he saw how bright her eyes were, and she bit down on her lower lip adorably to try and restrain her smile from breaking out across her face.

"Hi," Jace nodded at her.

"Hey," Clary replied with a tilt of her head.

"I'm Jace," he said to her, and for a moment, she looked confused. "I work for a private security company with hours that are a little unpredictable, but I generally have weekends off."

"I'm Clary," she responded in turn. "I'm a student and I live off campus with one of my friends. I used to have twenty babysitters following me around at all times and a dad who was a bit over protective, but now, it's only me."

"Only you?" Jace raised an eyebrow. Clary smile stretched as she tried again.

"Only us?" She attempted and Jace grinned at her.

"Only us," he confirmed.

 **I hope you guys enjoyed the update! I'm not too sure how much longer I'll be able to keep up with the weekly updates, but we'll see how it goes. Haha. On with my top 10 of the week;**

 **1) _Walls_ \- Louis Tomlinson. 2) _Wrong Direction_ \- Hailee Steinfeld. 3) _Alanis' Interlude_ \- Halsey and Alanis Morissette. 4) _Brooklyn Baby_ \- Lana Del Rey. 5) _You Should Be Sad_ \- Halsey. 6) _Venice Bitch_ \- Lana Del Rey. 7) _Fake Love_ \- BTS. 8) _Too Young_ \- Louis Tomlinson. 9) _Love Me Less_ \- MAX and Quinn XCII. 10) _She_ \- Harry Styles.**

 **And then my husbands repeats for the past week have been the new In This Moment song, _The In-Between_ , and _Blood, Sweat & Tears_ by BTS.**

 **I haven't watched anything new, really, other than the _Nancy Drew_ series that's out. I don't mind it, but it just doesn't strike the same chord that the book series did when I was younger, it doesn't have the same feel. Even the old movie with Emma Roberts in it had a more nostalgic feel to it, but given how different it is from the books, it's kind of easy to just make it feel like a completely new fandom all together. Oh, and I did finish _Reprisal_ , and it was fucking amazing, so I definitely recommend that.**

 **Please leave a review, let me know what you think of the update, let me know your favourite song at the moment, or your favourite movie or TV series or favourite lyrics or whatever the hell ya want xx**


	16. P: Poison

**P : _Poison_ \- Beyonce**  
 **Requested by _Jessilou525_**

 _Baby, you're just like poison_  
 _Slowly moving through my system_  
 _Breaking all of my defences with time_  
 _You're just like poison_  
 _And I just don't get it_  
 _How can something so deadly_  
 _Feel so right_  
 _I'm not sure of what to do_  
 _It's a catch 22_  
 _Cause the cure is found in you_  
 _I don't want it but I do_  
 _You're just like poison_  
 _My affliction, I'm addicted, I can't lie_  
 _Kiss me one more time before I die_

Clarissa Morgenstern swallowed hard and pulled her cardigan tighter around her. She was dressed like she was most days; a denim mini skirt that was nowhere near as mini as some of the girls in her school. A short sleeved, pale pink tee-shirt that covered her shoulders and didn't show a hint of cleavage and a white cardigan over top with a couple of diamanties sprinkled over the collar. Sometimes she would wear jeans, when it was colder. Sometimes she would wear singlets under her cardigans, although they weren't shoe-strings strapped singlets, they had wide straps and they were never low enough to show any cleavage. She had a single stud in each ear, no make up other than some slightly tinted chapstick on her mouth and her hair was pulled back in a high ponytail, although her red curls rebelled a little even in the strict ponytail, curling messily down her back.

She didn't look any different than any other day.

But she felt different.

Because last night, she had lost her virginity.

It shouldn't be such a big deal—she was seventeen, most of the other people in her grade at school had been having sex for the past two years—but it _was_ a big deal.

Because she had lost it to Jace Herondale.

Jace was the son of one of the biggest defense attorney's in the city. It was well known that his clients were some of the shadiest and deadliest people in the area, and the money that he made was blood money. But there was a _lot_ of money, and that was why Jace was still in the private high school that Clary's parents could barely scrape the money together to send her too, even though he had been suspended multiple times, skipped classes every other day, smoked on school grounds and blatantly ignored the school dress code of 'casual business attire' with his heavy motorcycle boots and leather jacket.

 _Why_ Jace had shown interest in Clary, she had no idea.

Half the girls in school were in love with him, probably a good deal of the guys as well.

And yet, last month, after she had helped out with a Biology assignment, he had had asked for her number. And then he had called her. He had called her nearly every night before she went to bed. He text her through the day. He would come by her classes, waiting outside before she finished, which meant that he was either cutting out of his own classes early or he just wasn't going to them at all. He made plans with her in the weekend that he kept to, although she made sure to never meet him at her house, because seeing her on the back of a motorbike would undoubtedly send her father into an early grave.

All of those things made him sound like a complete gentleman.

He wasn't.

He cared about her, although she still couldn't figure out why, since she was all kinds of boring, so he never made her feel unsafe with him, but it was obvious that he had been around his father and his fathers dealings a long time, and it had rubbed off on him.

She was sitting with him and his cousins, Alexander and Isabelle Lightwood, at lunch one day, feeling completely out of place with the three loud and gorgeous people when one of the other students came over to the table. Clary wasn't too sure what had happened between them, but the other guy had two of his friends at his back—all of them in the basketball team—and confront Jace. A fight had broken out, and Jace had ended it, on top of the first guy, pummeling his face. The guy had ended up in hospital with a broken nose, two chipped teeth and cracked ribs. When Jace had gotten off the guy, he was grinning, not looking bothered by the blood on his knuckles or the bloody nose he had.

That wasn't the first and definitely not the last time she had seen him fly off the handle.

Given her pretty low social standing, Clary was not unused to a couple of snide remarks in the hallways or classrooms. However, after _whatever_ it was that she and Jace had going on had started, it had only taken him hearing one muttered comment about her and Jace had him slammed up against the lockers. It looked like he was actually going to punch the guy in the face, even though there had never been anything physical until Jace had stepped in.

Then there had been the guy that had brushed up against her when Jace had gotten them into a club with fake ID's. Clary had already felt uncomfortable enough, dressed in one of Isabelle's skin tight, black dresses that showed a whole lot more than she usually would, and so when she felt a hand grope her ass, she stiffened up so much she nearly toppled over.

Jace _definitely_ made things physical then.

He threw the guy over a table.

And then there was the guy at the movies who made a pass at her. Jace had straightened himself to his full height and glared at him until he had backed away.

She felt like a different person when she was around Jace—she felt like she could _be_ someone else. As soon as they were apart, she instantly felt as though she was crashing back into her own world, and it made her question everything she was doing, including the interest that Jace had in her.

Which is why she had been so hesitant at letting things go further.

Last night, though, things had just felt different.

Jace hadn't been pushing things with her. He had never made her feel as though she needed to go any further than she was comfortable. Last night, they were laying in his surprisingly tidy room, on his bed while watching _Mulan_ and he had started singing along under his breath. There was just something insanely endearing that had Clary find some courage deep inside of her and roll over so that she was laying over him and kissing him hard on the mouth.

One thing lead to another, and then Jace was pushing inside of her and she was losing her virginity to him.

When she had gone home that night, she felt like an entirely different person.

It wasn't that she thought she _looked_ any different, because she thought all of that was bullshit, when girls went on about how they glowed or suddenly looked like adults.

It was just different because she had always been the good girl.

Always been the nerd.

Always been the quiet one.

Always been the careful one.

And then she had gone and had sex with one of the scariest guys in the school.

The same guy who had said that he would pick her up half an hour ago and now hadn't shown up.

This had been something that she had been worried about, right from the start.

That he was just in until he got what he wanted.

That he wasn't really interested in her, he was just interested in the chase.

What was a guy like him interested in a girl like her for?

And it would be better for her if he wasn't interested because she had a whole twenty year plan in front of her. How she was going to graduate in top five percent of her class, how she was going to move to New York, how she was going to go off to college, how she was going to have a good career, how she was going to make sure not to have a serious relationship until she had achieved all her goals...

Then there was the roar of an engine and she looked up to see Jace's motorbike coming around the corner. Clary felt her heartbeat pounding in her chest and her eyes widened as he got closer.

"Sorry, babes," he grinned at her from behind aviator sunglasses. "My dad wanted to talk and then traffic was a bitch on the way here—always is when you're already running late."

"It's fine," Clary told him quietly.

"It's not, but I'll make it up to you," Jace smirked at her and then reached behind him for the spare helmet that was hooked on the back of his bike. "Let's go."

And she did.

 **Okay, so my top songs this week are as follows;**

 **1) _Walls_ \- Louis Tomlinson. 2) _Alanis' Interlude_ \- Halsey and Alanis Morissette. 3) _Venice Bitch_ \- Lana Del Rey. 4) _Fake Love_ \- BTS. 5) _Too Young_ \- Louis Tomlinson. 6) _Always You_ \- Louis Tomlinson. 7) _Mikrokosmos_ \- BTS. 8) _Caught Up In Your Storm_ \- Mickey Guyton. 9) _8TEEN_ \- Khalid. 10) _Heebiejeebies_ \- Aminé and Kehlani.**

 **The song that my husband hasn't stopped playing is _Dionysus_ by BTS. We've been on a total BTS buzz lately, totally jumping on that train, even if we're a little late. My hubby's faves are Suga, Jungkook and Namjoon—he completely swoons everytime Suga comes on stage or starts rapping. Haha. Mine would be Namjoon, who I, admittedly, swoon over everytime he comes on screen, and then Jungkook, even if he's too pretty to even exist.**

 **In one of my reviews, _KnivesOut_ recomended _Anne With An E_ which I have actually watched before although I haven't finished yet, and I definitely want to recommend to you guys! I remember reading the books when I was younger and loving them, and there's just something about this series that has brought it all back. I've also started watching _Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood_ when me and my husband are high, and I'm super into it. Haha.**

 **I think my weekly updates are going to slow down a bit for a few weeks, although I think I had a good run! So I'll be doing previews of the next chapter if you leave a review and let me know if you want one or not.**

 **Also, feel free to hit me up on my socials;  
** **Tumblr: SereneCalamity  
** **Twitter: CalamitySerene**

 **xx**


	17. Q: Queen of My Heart

**Next chapter!**

 **Q : _Queen of My Heart_ by Westlife**  
 **Requested by _RumpelstiltskinWantsMySanity_**

 _I'll always look back as I walk away_  
 _Memories will last for eternity_  
 _And all of our tears will be lost in the rain_  
 _When I found my way back to your arms again_  
 _But until that day, you know you are_  
 _The queen of my heart_

Jace Herondale let out a long sigh of relief as the uber turned down the street of his home. It was almost seven o'clock on a Friday night, which wasn't a late hour, but after the past couple of months, spending a lot of his time on flights between New York and Los Angeles, working fourteen hour days, it was catching up to him. He was taking a long weekend this weekend though, and then he didn't need to fly back out to New York for a few weeks and hopefully that would be the last time. Usually when it came to the travel, it was shared between Jace and his business partner, Alexander Lightwood. But Alec and his husband, Magnus Bane, had just adopted a baby girl, Madzie Lightwood-Bane, who had just been a few weeks old when they had signed the adoption papers and he wanted to stay close to home as much as he could. Jace could completely understand that and Alec was his best friend as well as his business partner, so he had offered to take on their latest venture.

He loved his job, but he was going to be glad when this particular job was over and he was able to stay in his home city permanently.

The uber pulled up outside his house and Jace leaned forward to pay. After, he got out of the car and opened up the boot, pulling out his stuffed overnight bag and his briefcase, shutting it with his elbow and then heading up to the two storied house. The lawns were starting to get a little long and he made a mental note to do them tomorrow afternoon. He passed by the little red Toyata hatchback that Stevie Herondale had very proudly brought himself about six months ago when he got his licence and Shadow was curled up on the bonnet. She looked up when Jace walked past, letting out a meow and jumping off the bonnet, following Jace in as he unlocked the garage door. His wife's SUV was parked inside, a couple of bikes leaning against the side wall and two surfing boards carefully braced against the back wall. There was a small mountain of shoes beside the door that lead to the house, and Jace kicked his off, adding them to the pile.

As soon as he opened the door, Hunter was sprinting around the corner and toward the door, panting, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth. Shadow wasn't particularly impressed by the dog, although she wasn't impressed by much, and she picked up the pace, running past the dog and toward the lounge.

"Hey, boy," Jace juggled the bag and briefcase in his hand, reaching down to pat the dog on the head. Hunter wiggled herself around, tail wagging her whole end half, and she eagerly followed after Jace as he walked toward the lounge. The plasma TV that was mounted on the wall was playing quietly and he could see the head of his eldest son over the back of the large L-shaped couch. At the excited panting and barks from Hunter, Stevie straightened up and looked over the back of the couch, toward Jace.

"Dad!" He grinned widely, the dimple in his right cheek showing.

"Hey, kid," Jace put his bag and briefcase down against the wall and moved forward to ruffle his sons hair. "You been looking after our girls?" Stevie just rolled his eyes with a grin, given the standard question that his father asked him when getting home after a trip. There was homework spread out over the low coffee table and Stevie was holding a highlighter in one hand. "What subject?" He asked with a nod toward the work.

"Biology," he replied, making a face. The face that Jace made in return was almost identical. "Uncle Simon is going to come over tomorrow morning to help."

"Good—coz I'm absolutely shit with pretty much any of the Sciences," Jace answered with a grin. Stevie opened his mouth to reply when there was a screech and a tornado of red hair and pink clothing came barreling down the hall opposite him.

"Daddy!" Jeska Herondale squealed as she threw herself at her father. Jace braced his legs to prepare himself for the impact and laughed as he swung her up in the air, twirling her around before she latched her legs around Jace's torso and immediately launched into a play-by-play of everything that had happened since he had been gone. Jace listened attentively and Stevie managed to calm down the over-excited Hunter who was still trying to wrap himself around Jace's legs. "You're not going away again, right, daddy?" Jeska cut herself off mid-story with the urgent question. Jace heart squeezed at the question and he clicked his tongue.

"I'm sorry, Jessie-girl," Jace murmured. "Still need to go away a few more times." She pouted, her big green eyes sad. "But it's not for much longer, and I'm not going away until Tuesday, so I can come to your ballet class on Monday night." The green eyes widened and she let out a cheer, throwing her little fists in the air. "Now," Jace quickly spoke before she began detailing every little thing that she wanted to do with him that weekend. "I'm going to leave you here with Stevie for a few minutes, okay? I'll be back soon, I promise."

"Can you read me _Clifford_ before bed?" Jeska asked with a big, gap-toothed grin.

"I sure can, Jessie-girl," Jace leaned forward and gave her a quick kiss on the nose before putting her down. Stevie immediately shuffled over on the couch, making room for his sister and asking her what she wanted to put on TV. Jace watched them for a moment before beginning down the hall his middle child had just come from.

There were pictures on the walls that he saw every time he came down the hall, but he still let his eyes skim over them, his smile widening. There were dozens of pictures of the kids, and family photos, and then some of them with their closest friends, and ones of his and Clarissa Herondales wedding day. He paused near the end of the hall, looking at one of the older photos on the wall. It was a few days after Stevie had been born, which just so happened to also been Jace's seventeenth birthday. It was a picture of Clary holding Stevie with his arms proudly around them both.

They hadn't had the easiest journey.

Jace and Clary had been best friends since they were little and he had finally plucked up the courage to ask her out on her sixteenth birthday. They had only been together a couple of months when they found that Clary was pregnant. Clary's parents and Jace's mother had been absolutely furious, and for the first few weeks after finding out, Clary cried every day. Her parents, especially her father, had been adamant on her having a termination. She had only been five weeks along when they had found out, so she was early enough to have one. But after some time, Jace and Clary had both come to the decision that they wanted to keep their baby. There was no changing their minds, and so even though their parents hadn't been happy with their choice, they had supported them.

Their son had been born late on a Wednesday. He was a wrinkled, squealing lump of flesh and Jace had never loved anyone more. Clary wanted to name him after Jace's father, Stephen Herondale, who had died two years previously in a car crash, and hence he was christened Stevie.

It had been so hard that at times Jace didn't think they were going to make it, but they both graduated high school, Clary in the top five percent of two of her classes, with tremendous help from both of their families. Then they had moved out of Celine's home to get their own place. Clary went through university first, since her degree was shorter and she was only required to go in three days a week, which meant she could work part time. Jace split his time between working and looking after Stevie. He tried not to resent Clary, because he _loved_ spending time with his son, but sometimes he craved adult company that wasn't when he was working. His cousins were amazing and they were still close to this day, but they had both gone away for college, so he only saw them when they came home on the holidays.

Once Clary graduated, it was Jace's turn to go to university, and it was easier since Stevie was then off at school. Clary worked full time through the week while Jace was at university through the week and then worked weekends. It was hard, and it was as though they were just existing together and sharing a son between them, and there were eight or nine months throughout Jace's second year at university that it felt as though maybe they wouldn't make it, especially when Clary moved back to her parents for almost two months, and they had shared custody of Stevie for that period.

But they made it through.

And every hard time was worth what they had now.

They had gotten married when they were twenty-five, and not long after—when Stevie was ten—Clary fell pregnant again, with Jeska. She dropped down to working part time and financially it was a tough time because Jace and Alec had just gone into business together, but just like with Stevie, the minute Jace's eyes fell on his little girl, he knew every single thing that they had given up was worth just one moment with her.

Four years later, Clary fell pregnant again, and that was when they had decided they needed to buy their own place, big enough for all of them, along with Shadow—a stray cat that had acted as though she owned the place the minute Clary had brought her in from the cold—and also Hunter—the dog that Stevie had been begging them for since he was old enough to speak. They found a place and went through the stressful motions of buying it and moved in two days before Clary's water had broken, their third child coming almost four weeks early, which had brought its own set of problems.

But here they were.

They were all healthy and happy, and that was all Jace could ask for.

"Hey," Jace said quietly from the doorway of the bathroom. The room was a mess, given when Jeska had come flying down the hall, her hair had been tamed into two damp plaits and she smelt like the strawberry body wash Clary used for her, and now Clary was bathing Ava Herondale, their youngest. The eight month old let out a squeal and splashed her hands in the shallow water at her sides. Clary half turned, one hand still supporting Ava's back as she smiled up at her husband.

She was tired, he could see that in her eyes, and that's what happened when he was gone for so long and she was left to run a household with three kids and two pets while still working two days a week.

But she never complained.

She gave him and their family everything she had, showering them with love and affection and comfort and never demanding anything in return.

Jace's heart swelled in his chest as he looked at her green eyes with little laughing lines in the corners and at the wide smile she was giving him even though she was kneeling on the hard, tiled floors and her shirt looked as though it was completely soaked through, which had to be uncomfortable.

"Hey, baby," Clary murmured at Jace moved to kneel beside her, not caring that he was on Jeska's dirty clothes that hadn't made it to the laundry basket yet and his suit pants were going to get wet from where water had been splashed out over the edge of the bathtub.

"Missed you," he told her.

"Missed you more," Clary responded with a grin and Jace just leaned in, wanting to feel her lips against his. They were broken apart by an excited bark from Hunter as he bounded into the bathroom, demanding attention, and then there was a gurgle from Ava as she spotted the dog and began splashing around again.

"You go change into something dry," Jace told her. "I'll finish up with Ava." Clary nodded gratefully, waiting until Jace was in position to support Ava before she moved. She gathered up the dirty clothes and towel off the ground, dumping them into the laundry basket in the corner of the room. She came back over to him, dropping a kiss to the top of his head.

"I love you," she whispered to him.

"I love you more," Jace tipped his head back to look up at her and she rolled her eyes at his competitive remark that she had made countless times before, and would make a thousand more times going forward before nuzzling her nose to his.

"I love you most."

 **I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter :) Here's my top 10 on Spotify, as usual;**

 **1) _Kissing Other People_ \- Lennon Stella. 2) _Mikrokosmos_ \- BTS. 3) _Walls_ \- Louis Tomlinson. 4) _No Time To Die_ \- Billie Eilish. 5) _Euphoria_ \- BTS. 6) _I Need U_ \- BTS. 7) _Is It Just Me?_ \- Emily Burns. 8) _Homesick_ \- Dua Lipa. 9) _8TEEN_ \- Khalid. 10) _Bad_ \- The Cab.**

 **I'm feeling shit and watching _Sound of Music_. Hope your day is going better than mine x**


	18. R: Rescue Me

**Hey :) So. This year has already felt as though it's lasted a century and we're only two and half months in. _Shiiiiiiiiit_. I hope you're all okay and have support and love and care surrounding you. I love you all. **

**So, I absolutely _adore_ this song. I think I first heard it on that TV show _Scream_ , if I remember right? But anyway! Absolutely amazing song, go and listen to it!**

 **R : _Rescue My Heart_ \- Liz Longley**  
 **Requested by _Jling_**

 _Come down_  
 _Rescue my heart_  
 _I'll drown_  
 _Without you_

 _Come down_  
 _And rescue my heart_  
 _I'm deep underground_  
 _I can't dig my way out_  
 _So come down_

Jace Herondale's eyes narrowed as he looked across the roof of his car toward the winners circle. Sebastian Verlac was standing there with an arm wrapped possessively around Clarissa Morgenstern's shoulders. They were surrounded with about twenty or thirty after racers—half of them were racer bunnies in scraps of clothes and the rest were other racers. Jace teeth clenched together as he watched Sebastian accept a few kisses from one of the racers bunnies who bounced between all the racers, Kaelie Whitewillow, and her friend, Seelie Queen.

"Watch it, Jace," Alexander Lightwood said under his breath as he followed his cousins eyes. "You don't want him to catch you staring at Clary." Jace's fingers curled around the dark blue metal of the door of his Mazda RX-7 and tried to tear his eye away, but he couldn't.

He had returned to Los Angeles nine months ago after serving two years in prison for grand theft auto and his whole body had been wound tight as he had seen Sebastian—a long time rival of his and his best friend, Jonathan Morgenstern—showing Clary off as his girlfriend. If Jon had still been around, he would have ripped any body part off Sebastian that had touched his sister from his body and then hidden his little sister on some tiny, deserted island in the middle of the pacific.

Unfortunately, Jon wasn't there.

Jon had died in a car accident a couple months after Jace had been sent away, and Jace hadn't even been able to attend the funeral, prison rules stating he wouldn't be given leniency as he hadn't been family.

Family by blood anyway.

The two were practically brothers, they had grown up as neighbours and Jace had been fiercely protective of Clary, just like Jon had been.

Clary had always had something of a crush on Jace, but given the three year age gap between them and his loyalty to Jon, Jace had never let anything happen between them. While he had been in prison, Clary and Jon had visited him regularly before the crash, but afterwards, she had only come and seen him sporadically and had mainly just sent him letters.

It had been because of the money.

Clary hadn't been the one to tell him that, it had been Alec and Isabelle Lightwood.

Jon had lived for nearly a week after his bad car accident, before a blood clot had come loose and traveled to his heart. That week in hospital had been enough to rack up the bills, and then there had been the mortgage of the home that Clary and Jon taken over when their mother had passed away as well as the monthly rent of the garage that Jon ran.

She was drowning in debt.

And apparently that was where Sebastian had come along.

Jace didn't know the details, but from what Alec and Isabelle had told him, it sounded as though Sebastian had swooped in when she was at her weakest and practically brought her affection. Jace knew that there was a lot more to it, because Clary wasn't some damsel in distress who would have just fallen into the arms of the first man to come along, but she had been in a vulnerable position, and he knew that she would have felt as though she was letting down her brother by selling their childhood home or giving up the garage.

The reason that he didn't know the details was because he had barely spoken to Clary since he had been released.

She spoke at his parole hearing, but there was something different in the way that she talked and held herself, and it had been then that he had seen Sebastian sitting at the back of the room, watching her with narrowed eyes.

Once he had been released, he had gone by her house—the only place her and Jonathan had ever lived in—and his eyes had widened in surprise when he had seen Lydia Branwell, her cousin, living there with her girlfriend, Maia Roberts. Lydia hadn't said much about Clary, only that she had moved in with her new boyfriend and she wasn't around all that much these days. Jace had been angry at first, because Clary had never been the type of girl to ditch her friends and family for some guy, but the first time he saw her since getting out, at the downtown races where he was getting behind the wheel of his baby for the first time in years, he could see why she had.

There was a bruise on the side of her face that make up was doing a poor job of hiding and so her hair was down and covering half her face.

She wasn't driving either, she was standing on the sidelines with the rest of the crowd—the same girl who had thrown a temper tantrum when her older brother had tried to tell her that street racing was dangerous and she would be safer on the sidelines. Since she was _fifteen years old_ she had been racing and winning, and now she was in the crowd, with a bruise on her face and a fake smile on her lips.

Jace swore to himself right then and there that he was going to rescue her.

He owed it to Jonathan.

He owed it to her.

And so over the past couple of months, he found out as much as he could about what had happened to Clary and what it was that she owed to Sebastian. He didn't have a lot of money, so it wasn't as though he could buy her out of whatever financial issues she was having, but Jonathan would never want her saving their house and their garage at the risk of her body, and mind, and heart.

So he was going to get her out of there.

"Jace," Alec's voice was quiet. "You don't want to start anything right now. Not tonight." Isabelle was close behind her brother and she reached out and put her hand on Jace's shoulder, giving it a light squeeze. Jace took in a deep breath, calming himself down and focusing on Clary one last time. She was still standing at Sebastian's side, his heavy arm over her shoulders, but her eyes had found Jace. She was staring at him and when he caught her eyes, she gave him a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.

"Now, Izzy," Jace said. "Call them now." Isabelle nodded and stepped away. She was wearing a tight pair of jeans and a red shirt that blatantly showed off the fact she wasn't wearing a bra, and yet she was still dressed more modestly than most of the other women who were there. She pulled her phone out of her pocket as she wound her way toward where other cars were parked and that was when Jace and Alec lost her in the crowd. It would take a few minutes before there would be any response to Isabelle's phone call, but once it happened, everything was going to be pushed into fast forward.

"I'm going to head out of here," Alec told Jace and the golden haired man turned his head to look at his cousin. "Don't be gone too long, okay?"

"Only as long as we need to be," Jace replied, taking in a shaky breath.

He was going to be violating parole.

He was going to be leaving the only city he had ever called home.

He was going to be saying goodbye to the only family he ever had.

But like he had said to Alec, they would only going to be leaving for as long as they needed to. As long as it took them to figure out a way to get Clary out from underneath Sebastian's thumb, and then something that Jace hadn't told the redhead yet, but helping to fix her heart and soul after losing her brother and being held down all these years by someone who just wanted arm candy and treated her as though she was worth nothing.

Jace pulled his phone out of his back pocket and saw a text from Isabelle had come through, saying that she had just finished her call. Jace put his phone back in his pocket and looked at the scene around him.

This had been where he, Clary and Jonathan had lived, every Saturday night for years. They would all race—Jonathan was the best racer out of all of them, he was virtually unbeaten, and Jace was a close second. Clary was damn good as well, and she hated it when she got compared to other female drivers. She had always wanted to be compared to other _drivers_ , regardless of their gender.

He hadn't seen her behind a wheel of a car since he had been back.

That hurt.

"Cops are inbound!" Came a shout from someone who had been listening to the police scanner. "Cops are coming!" They repeated, raising their voice to be heard, and once a few people heard him over the music and general chatter, the news spread like wildfire and people began to disperse rapidly. Everyone was scrambling for their cars, especially the ones who had cars that were worth more than what some people earned in a year. In the whole mess and chaos, Sebastian and Clary got separated.

That was what he was counting on.

Jace jumped into his car, turning on the engine and shifting into first gear, one foot on the shift pedal and the other on the accelerator, keeping the car idling as he watched Sebastian run for his vehicle. As expected, he glanced around for Clary when he got to his car, but when he didn't see her around, he just got in and drove off, leaving her to fend for herself.

 _Or_ for Jace to look out for her.

The passenger door was thrown open and then Clary was sliding into the passenger seat next to him. Her face was pale and she wrung her hands together, but Jace didn't have time to ask her if she was okay because they just needed to get out of there before the cops descended on the place. He pressed his foot down hard on the accelerator and the car launched forward. He shifted easily between the gears as he sped down the long stretch of road in downtown Los Angeles, following closely behind a couple of other cars. He indicated right and then pulled a quick left. They could hear the sirens and Clary's hands were clenched tightly together, he could see that her knuckles were white, and Jace swallowed hard as he made another tight turn.

"We're going to be okay," Jace said through gritted teeth. Clary didn't say anything. Her shoulders were still tense and she was staring through the windscreen with wide eyes. Jace kept on driving, turning through the streets of downtown Los Angeles until they reached a highway. It was only as they got onto the highway and were speeding up, on their way _out_ of Los Angeles that she took in a deep breath and relaxed a little. "We're going to be okay," he repeated to her.

"You don't know that," Clary's voice was raspy.

"I _do_ ," Jace said firmly. She had packed a few things and given them to Isabelle, and they were in the boot of his car, next to a bag of his own things. "I know because it's you and it's me and we're gonna do Jon proud, yeah?" Clary blinked quickly and she seemed to relax even more as she looked over at him with a small smile.

"Yeah," she murmured. "You're right."

 **I hope you guys enjoyed the update :)**

 **My top 10 songs for this week;**

 **1) _Kissing Other People_ \- Lennon Stella. 2) _No Time To Die_ \- Billie Eilish. 3) _Mikrokosmos_ \- BTS. 4) _Euphoria_ \- BTS. 5) _Is It Just Me?_ \- Emily Burns. 6) _Parents_ \- Yungblud. 7) _Cherry_ \- Lana Del Rey. 8) _In Case You Don't Live Forever_ \- Ben Platt. 9) _Hope Is A Dangerous Thing_ \- Lana Del Rey. 10) _Homesick_ \- Dua Lipa.**

 **I've only been watching old stuff recently, like _Criminal Minds_ and _Hawaii Five-O_...My husband has big plans tonight though, and has suggested that we get high and watch _Little Mermaid_ , so that sounds brilliant and like exactly what I need for the end of my week. If you guys have any suggestions for animated movies, send them my way, because we need all the good stuff we can get in the world right now! Ooh, if I can suggest a twitter thread, actually, there's one posted by a user _PAYOLETTER_ which is just...A feel good time about how so many people now have their pets as colleagues now that they're working from home. Making the best of a bad situation. The thread is filled with pictures of animals, if you need fluff, that's where to go!**

 **Love you all x**


	19. Chapter 19

**Hey beautiful people :)**

 **Okay. So. I wanted to say something about everything that is going on rather than just make a few vague comments in my posts. The situation now deserves more than that, I think. Because things are hectic right now. Things are just a smidge crazy, you know? Umm...I get awkward in tense situations and it usually results in me laughing at the wrong time or needing to go and throw up, because I throw up when I'm anxious, and let me tell you, I throw up on average three times a week generally, and that is now a daily thing, so that's super cool! Anyway.**

 **Just thought I'd add in here, my husband and I woke up the other Sunday morning, read the latest updates, and by ten in the morning we were drunk and high and had made the decision not to leave the house for the rest of the day because of how scary the world seemed, so I hope you guys are handling it just as adult-like.**

 **A lot of you know that I live in New Zealand. We're pretty secluded, we're pretty safe when it comes to most things. We are so _incredibly lucky_. Compared to most countries right now, we still are safe and secluded and lucky.**

 **Three weeks ago, we had no cases (at least, no one was being tested and it was not a concern at that stage). Then we had eight, then twelve, then twenty, then twenty-eight and as I'm writing this I think we're at one hundred and two, which is quite a jump for just a week and a half since we first started hearing about them.**

 **There was an announcement yesterday that from midnight tomorrow, our country is going into lockdown, as there has now officially been evidence of community transmission with two of the cases. So...My husband and I are nervous but we're okay. I will be working from home, likely also working overtime, as my job is essential, and a lot of my co-workers are actually still expected to go into the office, but because of my health I'll be at home with my husband and my cats.**

 **My husband will not be working, which means like a lot of people in the world right now, we're worried about meeting our financial obligations, but I would take those concerns over watching him get sick. He's been exposed to a couple of people who are reckless and stupid and have come back from overseas and not self-isolated, and one of those people are now being tested, so we have to wait for those results. One of our nieces was tested the other night, and we should have the results back by tomorrow evening. We don't have any children, but we have lots of nieces and nephews, and we have a lot of friends with children who have health issues, and we lot of elderly relatives as well, and they're all of our focus right now.**

 **All around the world, we're seeing these incredible gestures of humanity that _prove that people are good_. There's just so much shit going on, so many politicians who are trying to act as though they know everything and haven't made a single misstep (I'm not even going to pretend I'm not insinuating the horrendous lump that sits in the Oval Office), so many companies that are looking at making money off peoples suffering, and _so much uncertainty_ and fear and we just have to remember that a majority of people _are good_.**

 **Now, even with my country going into lock down, I just wanted to say that even though I'm expected to work, I'm still going to try and get up some small oneshots along with some hopefully quicker chapters, because I feel all _I_ can do in this crisis is possibly provide you guys with a few minutes of entertainment.**

 **I just wanted to give you guys a bit of an update as to where I'm sitting in this whole...Fucking disaster. Please, feel free to message me, if you want to talk about where you guys are at, or if you guys have some ideas for some of the quick oneshots that you want to see, or if you just want to talk music or movies, I mean, we all have to be there for each other, right?**

 **I love you all so much and I hope, hope, hope you and yours are all safe in this weird time,**

 **Me xx**

 **Tumblr: SereneCalamity  
** **Twitter: CalamitySerene**


	20. S: Shape Of You

**An update for you beautiful people :)**

 **Just want to put a trigger warning at the beginning here that eating disorders are discussed in this installment.**

 **S : _Shape of You_ \- Ed Sheeran**  
 **Requested by _FrenchBenzo_**

 _I'm in love with the shape of you_  
 _We push and pull like a magnet do_  
 _Although my heart is falling too_  
 _I'm in love with your body_  
 _And last night you were in my room_  
 _And now my bedsheets smell like you_  
 _Every day discovering something brand new_  
 _I'm in love with your body_

 _Oh—I—oh—I—oh—I—oh—I_  
 _I'm in love with your body_  
 _Oh—I—oh—I—oh—I—oh—I_  
 _I'm in love with your body_  
 _Oh—I—oh—I—oh—I—oh—I_  
 _I'm in love with your body_  
 _Every day discovering something brand new_  
 _I'm in love with the shape of you_

When Clarissa Morgenstern was fifteen, she stopped eating.

Not _completely_ , but she stopped enough that her already petite frame lost the little weight that it held and her cheeks went from rosy apples to gaunt.

Her parents were going through a nasty divorce—turned out that her mother was seeing her father's partner on the force, Luke Garroway, and her father was out for blood—and her brother had decided to drop out of school and join the army, given he was now eighteen and he wanted to get away from the whole mess that their home life was now. Simon Lewis had gotten an internship at an accounting firm that his parents full heartedly endorsed, given that was what he wanted to get a degree in once he left school, so they were glad he could get a jump start. Her grades were steadily declining in her classes because she just couldn't focus with everything that was happening at home and every time she got in front of her easel, which was usually her escape that helped with _everything_ , she just drew a blank.

All she saw was helplessness in a swirling, black pit.

So to try and get _some_ semblance of control, she limited her eating.

She didn't realize people around her were even paying attention, because it felt as though she was completely alone, with her parents and her brother and Simon focusing on other things.

But Jace Herondale noticed.

The guy next door who she used to be friends when she was younger but as they grew up, they had just grown apart.

He noticed and it helped.

When Clary was eighteen, she was just starting to come out the other side.

It had been a long progress, which had involved her weight dropping below eighty pounds and her being admitted to hospital on and off for almost two months and having to take her classes by correspondence for a while. Her parents had come through for her, putting aside their differences to support her. Her brother also got in contact with her as much as he could, skyping her through his boot camp and from the base once he was deployed. Simon didn't understand a lot—but neither did Clary, most of the time—but he loved her, and showed her that. She also got close with another girl who went to the same group therapy that she did, Kaelie Whitewillow, which helped.

And then there was Jace.

Clary didn't think she would have ever made it through without Jace.

He made sure she always had a ride to her group therapy, always had support after her appointments with her psychologist. He never watched her when she was eating in the same way that her parents did, but she also never pushed things around her plate and underneath her napkin or dropped them on her lap to hide later like she did with her parents and the doctors.

Part of that was because she didn't want to disappoint him, and that was something that she worked on with the psychologist, because she couldn't get better for _Jace_ , she had to get better for _her_.

And so she did.

It was hard, and she cried a lot, and sometimes she slipped up, and things got so much that she stopped eating for full days at a time and it felt as though she was right back where she was three years ago.

But she was stronger than she had ever given herself credit for, and even though it took her longer than she thought it would, she had graduated high school and she was going off to NYU to pursue her art career. She was still living at home, she was going to commute from home, something that she had chosen to do, although the relief was very evident on her mothers face when she had told her. Jace was moving out, so was Simon, and her psychologist had said that it was up to her at the end of the day; it would be a good step forward for her, give her a lot of independence, but she was also going to be starting university, which was something completely new, and maybe having something solid, like her home with her mum, would be a good thing to return to at the end of each day.

It was for the best.

She was happy with her decision.

When Clary was twenty-one, she was she pretty sure she weighed the most that she ever had in her life.

That wasn't to say that she was heavy, because she most definitely wasn't, but when she finally took a minute out of her very busy schedule to look at herself in the mirror, she realized that she was a bit more rounded than she was before. She hadn't stepped on the scales since she was nineteen, at her last hospital appointment where Jace had been holding her hand the entire time, but she dragged a set out of one of the boxes in her spare room and stepped onto them.

One hundred and twenty pounds.

There was no sinking feeling in her stomach.

There was no panicking squeeze of her heart.

She got off the scales and walked back into the bathroom and looked at her reflection again.

Her cheeks were a little flushed, since she had just gotten back to the apartment after her morning jog with Maia Roberts, one of the girls who was in her uni class. She actually had breasts now, that were pressing against the sports bra she had on under her grey singlet—and they weren't tiny things either, they were actually a decent shape—something that Jace praised on an almost nightly basis as his mouth worshiped them. Her stomach wasn't flat, it had a slight curve, but only a slight one. She couldn't count every single one of her ribs. When she turned side on, she had a bit of an ass as well.

Jace came into their bathroom, raising his eyebrows at her as he looked at the way she was staring at himself. Clary's eyes slid from the mirror and to Jace, and he saw that there was slight apprehension there.

He was worried that she was being critical of herself.

She wasn't.

She went out at least twice a week for dinner; with Jace, with one of her parents, with Kaelie, with Jace's cousins—Alexander and Isabelle Lightwood—or with one of their other friends. She had fun and she had a full meal, and she would always order dessert, even if it was to split with someone else.

She didn't count the calories.

She ate healthy, but if she was going out on a coffee date with Magnus Bane, who was taking the same classes as her, she would add extra sugar to her coffee and she would order one of the fudge brownies that she loved so much.

She went for jogs with Maia and her and Isabelle had a standing yoga date.

She looked after herself.

"You're fucking gorgeous," Jace told her, his voice gravelly, and as Clary met his eyes, she believed him. She smiled, before wrapping her arms around him and kissing him hard. He easily lifted her up and put her ass on the edge of their vanity unit, quickly stripping them both of their clothes.

When Clary was twenty-six, she was pregnant.

She was going to be having two little babies, a boy and a girl, wrapped around each other in her stomach. She was only a month off her due date, but her midwife and doctor both expected her to go into labor within the next few weeks.

Weight wasn't something that crossed her mind.

Jace doted on her hand and foot, his excitement clear on his face whenever he looked at her.

Sometimes it got just a _smidge_ frustrating, because he wouldn't even let her do the dishes or tie her own shoes, but when she got home from work—she was determined to work right up until the moment she couldn't get herself up—with swollen feet and an aching back, she was never more grateful.

She grumbled about the stretch marks on her sides, but it was never anything serious.

She sighed about having to get new bras because she was bursting out of her own, but she enjoyed shopping for maternity ones with her mother and Kaelie.

And Jace smoothed his hands over her shoulders, down her arms, over her rounded stomach and then around her thighs, resting on her ass, on a daily basis, whispering his love for her over and over again. They would be lying in bed at night, and he would have rubbed both of her feet thoroughly until they were no longer throbbing, and he would tell her what an incredible thing she was doing, bringing their babies into the world, and Clary would feel tears in her eyes.

She blamed pregnancy hormones, and that was definitely a big part of it, but she was just happy.

So happy.

 **There's been quite a bit of binge watching happening in this household, the _Transformers_ series, all the _Toy Story's_ , _Schitts Creek, 24_ and a lot of old _RuPaul_. Oh, and of course, _Tiger King_ , which was just...One hell of a trip. Holy hell. What have you guys been watching?**

 **And of course, my top ten songs this week;**

 **1) _Smiling When I Die_ \- Sasha Sloan. 2) _Why Are You Here_ \- Machine Gun Kelly. 3) _Who_ \- Lauv featuring BTS. 4) _Kissing Other People_ \- Lennon Stella. 5) _Fuck It I Love You_ \- Lana Del Rey. 6) _Hope Is A Dangerous Thing_ \- Lana Del Rey. 7) _On_ \- BTS. 8) _Forever_ \- Fletcher. 9) _No Time To Die_ \- Billie Eilish. 10) _Too Young_ \- Louis Tomlinson.**

 **I hope you're all staying safe and sane, wherever you are xx**


	21. T: They Don't Know About Us

**Hey, guys! I hope you're all safe! I hope you're all sane! I hope you're all blessed with brilliant house companions and high speed internet! I am trying to stay positive because the world is fucking scary, and on with the chapter!**

 **T : _They Don't Know About Us_ \- One Direction**  
 **Requested by _trisherondalemorgenstern_**

 _They don't know about the things we do_  
 _They don't know about the 'I love yous'_  
 _But I bet you if they only knew_  
 _They would just be jealous of us_  
 _They don't know about the up all night_  
 _They don't know I've waited all my life_  
 _Just to find a love that feels this right_  
 _Baby, they don't know about, they don't know about us_

Shadowhunters and Downworlders had an agreement.

They had for centuries.

That didn't mean that it was an easy agreement and definitely not a happy one.

There was resentment and anger on both sides, unresolved issues that would probably never see the light of day, given Shadowhunters would only interact with Downworlders when it was of the utmost necessity and Downworlders avoided Shadowhunters as though their lives depended on it.

A lot of the time, it was because they did.

Clarissa Morgenstern was Shadowhunter royalty. Her great-grandparents were Shadowhunters, her grandparents were Shadowhunters, her parents were Shadowhunters and now she and her brother were. She had been trained since she could walk how to use a seraph blade and she had been learning to fight since coul run. She was sixteen the first time she killed a Downworlder, and only eighteen when she killed a Greater Demon.

She was efficient, she was intelligent, she was lethal and she was in love with the prince of the werewolves, Jace Herondale.

They had met in a bar—a Downworlder bar—when Clary had been working. They had both been very aware of who each other was when they saw each other—Clary had a glamour to keep her appearance from the other bar patrons, and that included masking her scent, but somehow Jace had seen right through it. He had brought her a drink, then sat down in the stool next to her and asked her to come home with him.

She'd made a terse remark about how kennels weren't quite her thing and his eyes had glinted gold at her disrespectful comment, but he hadn't called her out on it, had just picked up a napkin from the bar and found asked for a pen, and then scrawled out his number. He had said that when she wanted to roll around with the dogs, to give him a call.

There was something that could be said about rolling around with dogs and getting fleas, but Clary had been so stunned that she had been silent as he walked away.

It had taken Clary nearly four months before she text Jace, but his response had been quick.

They had met at an upscale hotel in downtown New York, and they had fucked so many times that Clary had needed to use a healing rune to get the aches out of her body and ensure that she was walking straight the next morning.

It had taken her another two months before she messaged him again, and they met in a similar hotel, with the exact same outcome.

The time after that it had only been six weeks, and then three weeks, and then only a week and a half after she had a particularly hard mission where her partner, Simon Lewis, had been injured badly by a vampire. She needed an outlet, and Jace was the only one that she had been with who managed to wear her out to the point where she wasn't thinking about _work_ anymore, and she thought that was what she needed.

Except when Jace met her at the hotel he had sent her the address for, he had sniffed the air and tilted his head to the side.

He had told her that he could smell the blood and the grief coming off her in waves.

Clary had frozen, not sure of how to respond, and then she had broken down.

Her whole body was shaking as she slumped against the wall and slipped down to the ground, tears falling down her cheeks. She didn't know what she expected, but it hadn't been Jace sitting on the ground next to her, putting his arm around her and holding her tight against his body.

It had been a long time since she had let herself really let go, given the expectations that fell on her shoulders as the second-in-command of the New York Institute and as the daughter of two of the highest ranking Shadowhunters in the world, and it just felt so good to have someone holding her, telling her that it was going to be okay, rubbing his arm up and down her back and kissing her hair.

After that, things shifted.

Clary talked to Jace.

Jace showed her his wolf.

They barely went two or three days without seeing each other, although there were times when Clary was away on a mission and she was away for a week—sometimes longer—at a time, and she was surprised by how much she missed Jace.

They no longer met at hotels or unfamiliar places. Instead, Clary would meet Jace at his place, his apartment in Brooklyn that felt more like a home than any of the ones that Clary had grown up in. There was history in his place, a warmth, somewhere that his pack would gather and laugh and comfort one another and Clary couldn't explain the ache in her chest the first few times that she had stepped inside.

But the longer they were together, the more like home it felt like _for her_.

It wasn't a place though.

It was Jace.

The first time that he told her that he loved her, they were in the middle of the forest that Jace ran through with his pack during the full moon. He had taken her deep into the forest, further than she would usually ever go, to a lake that he would always end up sleeping beside when he had run himself ragged on the nights of the full moon. Clary hadn't known why Jace wanted to take her there to begin with, but then he had explained what this place meant to his wolf, and she had realized how important it was to him, and then he had told her that he loved her.

At first, Clary had panicked.

She had stared at him with wide eyes and not said a thing.

Jace waited.

He didn't repeat himself, he just continued holding her hand and waited.

She knew that he could hear her heart beat, thundering double time, and that he could smell the confusion and alarm coming off her.

She had never told anyone that she had loved them before.

Not even her parents or her brother.

The words had felt strange, forming in her mouth, but after she said them, they felt right, and she had said them again, and they didn't feel quite as strange.

When she said them for a third time, obviously Jace believed her statement, because he had grinned wide and leaned in and kissed her hard on the mouth, and she could feel the slight sting of his fangs pressing into her bottom lip.

Clary _loved_ him.

But being a Shadowhunter was her life.

It wasn't just that her parents would look down on her being in a relationship with a Shadowhunter, it would put everything that she had ever known out of balance. Her job would be on the line, her position at the Institute might be taken away, and she had no idea how her brother would react.

Jace knew this, because he was facing the same thing with his father.

His father was a King among werewolves, he was the Alpha of the largest pack in northern hemisphere, and it was expected that Jace would take over when he was ready to step down. There was a lot on Jace's shoulders—even more than Clary—but he had told her over and over again that while that was important to him, that what they had was worth him risking everything for.

And so she did the same.

They didn't know where it was going to go, they didn't know how things were going to work, and they definitely didn't know when they were going to have to bring their relationship into the public light. It wasn't a matter of 'if', it was definitely 'when', and the longer than they waited, the worse it was going to be.

But for now, they enjoyed the calm before the storm.

 **I have a few TV recommendations few guys, since we've been inside doing almost nothing else for the past few weeks. _Breeders_ is really funny in a total black comedy kind of way, although there's definitely a few things that hit a little close to home. And then there's _Car Masters: Rust to Riches_ which is this car show where they take cars and do them up into something crazy. Me just writing that sounds bland as shit, and I never watch this shows! Haha. We never watch car shows or anything, but this one is just different, the whole group is just really entertaining. There's two seasons, so yeah, just check it out to see if it's your thing!**

 **My top ten songs that I would recommend this time around are;**

 **1) _Smiling When I Die_ \- Sasha Sloan. 2) _Forever_ \- Fletcher. 3) _On_ \- BTS. 4) _Kissing Other People_ \- Lennon Stella. 5) _Pretend You're Missing Me_ \- Betty Who. 6) _Not In The Same Way_ \- 5 Seconds of Summer. 7) _Paper Hearts_ \- Tori Kelly. 8) _Cruel Intentions_ \- Delacey and G-Eazy. 9) _Ophelia_ \- The Lumineers. 10) _Highway To Heaven_ \- NCT 127.**

 **I hope you guys enjoyed the update! And the recommendations! I hope they provided a little bit of distraction in these...Weird times we're living in. Leave a comment, let me know what you thought of the update and please recommend songs and movies and TV series and whatever! I've heard from a few people that they've looked at other peoples recommendations and really enjoyed them, so it's not just me you're being a hero for right now! Haha.**

 **Much love from me to you x**

 **Tumblr: SereneCalamity**  
 **Twitter: CalamitySerene**


	22. U: Undone

**U : _Undone_ \- Haley Reinhart**  
 **Requested by _KellyJellyxo_**

 _Tell me where love goes when it's gone_  
 _Tell me where hearts go when they go wrong_  
 _Suddenly someone is no one I've come_  
 _Undone, undone, undone_

 _Nothing but emptiness inside_  
 _Love leaves a black hole where it dies_  
 _How can I ever love again, I've come_  
 _Undone, undone, undone_  
 _Undone, undone, undone_  
 _Undone, undone_

Clarissa Morgenstern took in a deep breath as she stared at her reflection in the floor to ceiling mirror that stretched along the whole side of the wall. She was sweating and her face was red, almost to the point that it was matching her hair colour, and she had strands of her hair sticking to her cheeks and forehead. She was only wearing a grey sports bra with yoga pants, and sweat was glistening on her abdominals muscles and over her biceps.

She took in a deep breath as the music started again, filling the room, she rolled her shoulders backwards and then she let herself get taken away by the music. Her body twisted gracefully, her strong thighs bracing as she dropped herself almost to a complete squat before lifting back up, spinning herself around on one leg, almost up on her toes, and then dropping back down.

She had been dancing since five o'clock this morning and it was nearly four in the afternoon. She'd allowed herself two breaks, one at ten o'clock, when one of her teachers had come in and wanted to talk to her about her routines and give her some pointers and another just after one o'clock, when she had to give in to the gnawing at the pit of her stomach for something to eat. She made herself a smoothie in the small, adjoining kitchen and had then thrown herself back into dancing, ignoring the stitch that she got in her side, powering right through it.

Clary was one of the most promising students of the Wayward Arts Academy.

She was told that, over and over again.

By her oppressive parents, by her encouraging grandparents, by her teachers who just pushed and pushed and pushed.

She knew they all just wanted what was best for her, and they wanted her to reach her absolute potential.

She never wanted to seem ungrateful, but it was Saturday, and while there were dedicated students at the arts academy—you _had_ to be live and breathe your art if you were in attendance, given what high expectations the school had and how expensive it was to go there—usually on a Saturday afternoon, most students were giving themselves a break.

Maybe hanging out with their friends at the park.

Maybe having a few drinks at a pub.

Maybe going out to a movie and getting buttery popcorn.

She couldn't do any of that.

She had already performed in a national showcase that had taken her to four different cities over two months and that had bolstered her name in the circle of directors for dance productions and she was getting calls and emails regularly. She had an audition coming up for a showcase that had the potential to launch her internationally, and that was why she was practicing so hard now, not letting herself slip even in the slightest.

She didn't have time for friends.

She didn't have time for going out drinking and partying.

She definitely didn't have the time for boyfriends.

She didn't have time for anything except dancing.

The song was nearing it's end, and Clary spun herself around again, throwing her body backwards in a tight circle before landing on the ground in the splits, legs quivering a little from exertion as she straightened her torso and stared at her reflection in the mirror once more.

Her eyes were a little dull and her hair was a bit stringy. Her cheeks were a bit sunken and her skin was even more pale than usual, since she had barely been getting any sun. Her body was muscular but it was also starting to look a bit gaunt, and she _knew_ that she needed to give herself a break. She had been throwing everything she had into her dancing, and even though that was something that had always been the priority, since she was three years old, she had always made sure to give herself a break from time to time. Make sure that she was sleeping and eating right, and exercising outside of the studio so that she got fresh air and sunlight.

But if she let herself have those things—if she let herself relax or sleep to the point where she could dream, all the memories of him came back.

His voice when he sang.

His eyes when he laughed.

His hands when he reached for her.

It wasn't _fair_ that she had always had her goal so clearly in front of her whole life and then he just came along and disrupted it in a matter of months.

Clary shook her head, trying to get the thoughts of him out of her head as she got to her feet, swinging her eyes away from the mirror in front of her. She didn't want to look at her reflection because she looked the skinniest that she ever had, and her eyes looked...Sad. She had never looked like that when she had been with him, but she couldn't let those thoughts bounce around in his head because she didn't have time for that.

The audition was coming up in four days, and if she got the part, then she would barely have time to breathe, muchless pursue a relationship that threatened to consume her. She had never had time for boyfriends before, only fooling around a couple of times when she was in high school but never anything serious.

And then _he_ had come along.

He had girls all over the campus panting after him and surprisingly, despite his cocky smirk, he was actually a really nice guy. He had brought her coffee and taken her out on group dates and he had come to pick her up after classes. He hadn't pressured her to drink when they went out like a lot of other people did—well meaning people, absolutely, but they just didn't understand that she had to watch her weight like a hawk and she couldn't risk a hangover or anything that would affect her practice the next day. He understood when she had said that she couldn't go out late at night and why she was busy _all the time_. He didn't get annoyed when she could barely ever go to his gigs and he hadn't pushed her when she had to postpone on him over and over again.

He deserved better.

That's what Clary had told herself when she had broken things off with him after they had officially been seeing each other for seven months.

It had hurt and she had cried about the decision night after night after night.

What was even worse was the way that he had looked at her after she had broken up with him.

He had looked _sorry_ for her.

He had looked hurt and upset, but most of all he looked _sorry_ for her.

He hadn't tried to talk her out of it, he had enough respect for her to know that she would have already thought of it from every angle and this was the option that she had chosen as best for herself. He had told her that he really liked her and that he thought they were good together and that he knew how important dancing was to her, but that there were other things in the world that were important as well, and he hoped that she didn't miss out on those because she was so focused on one thing.

Clary had stared at him, not knowing what to say, as he leaned forward and gave her a kiss that was so soft it made her whole body ached. Then he had pulled back and given her hand a squeeze before walking away from her.

It had never hurt so much to see someone walk away.

It was nearly two months later, but Clary still felt as though there was this aching hole inside her body that never used to be there, and she didn't know how to get rid of it. All she needed before was dance. Dance, dance, dance. But for some reason, it was as though her mind and body thought that she needed something else as well.

So she just kept on pushing herself.

Clary's legs felt as though they were going to collapse underneath her as she walked over to where her bag was laying on the ground. She pulled out a thin woolen jersey and tugged it on and then pulled out a bottle of water. She made sure not to drink it too quickly and then she splashed some on her hand and wiped it over her sweaty face. She put her bottle back in her bag and twisted her hair back in a clumpy ponytail and then started walking out of the studio.

She winced as the sun outside hit her eyes and she blinked a couple of times, ducking her head down as she began walking toward the dorms. There were still quite a few people on campus, but none of them seemed to be in the same, serious head space that she was.

She walked fast, head down, sun at her back.

She just wanted to get to her dorm, where she would shower, have something quick to drink and then head out for a run until she was ready to pass out.

She was almost there— _so close_ —when she heard his laugh, and she couldn't help but jerk her head upward and seek him out.

Standing with his cousin and a few of his friends, Jace Herondale was walking down the front steps of his own dorm. He hadn't seen her and he was being loud, like he usually was, and he had no idea that her stomach was churning and that hole inside her just felt like it was getting bigger and bigger. She couldn't look away, though, and her steps were slowing down, even though she was trying to push her aching muscles forward.

Then he looked up and he caught her eyes, and that gorgeous smile on his face—that smile that had been directed at her countless times—faded. It wasn't an annoyed or angry look on his face, it was sad, just like every time he looked at her.

She felt tears cloud her vision—she told herself that it was frustration, but she knew that was a lie—and she managed to duck her head forward and practically _sprint_ toward her dorm.

She wouldn't always feel like something was missing.

She wouldn't always feel like something was coming undone.

She wouldn't always feel like something was wrong.

She didn't know _when_ she would be okay, all she could tell herself was that it _would_ happen.

Because that was the only way she was getting by.

 **Hey, guys. Hope you enjoyed the update. Be kind and well.**


	23. V: Vicious Love

**V : _Vicious Love_ \- New Found Glory featuring Hayley Williams**  
 **Requested by _reppinda5o3_**

 _We've got a vicious love_  
 _We mix our tears with blood_  
 _No clock will stop for us_  
 _It ticks by_  
 _We fight as hard as we love_  
 _We've got a vicious love_

Clarissa Morgenstern's eyes were glowing a bright gold as she stared at the person opposite her. She was breathing hard and her hair was falling out from the ponytail she had jerked it back into a few hours ago when she had left home. There was sweat beading at her forehead and she could taste the salt as she licked her tongue over her upper lip and shook her head, shaking out a few strands of hair that were sticking to her forehead and falling in front of her eyes

A fist flew at her face and she ducked quickly, lunging forward and throwing her weight behind her shoulder as she drove it into Jace Herondale's stomach. He let out a grunt and he jerked backwards two steps before he steadied himself, balancing and shoving her backwards. Clary jabbed her fists at him, trying to catch him her elbow as he spun her around and then sent her flying over his head, smacking down hard on the thin mat that stretched over a small area of the concrete floor.

There was a cracking sound as Clary's head hit the ground hard and also the sound of one or two of the bones in her arm which landed awkwardly, half underneath her. Clary lay there for a moment, gathering her bearings, letting her supernatural healing begin its work before she got to her feet again. She had bitten her lip when she had been thrown down, and the skin had quickly healed itself but there was still a drop of blood beaded there. Clary ran her thumb over the corner of her lip, catching the smudge of blood and licking it off her thumb with smirk at Jace.

His Alpha red eyes flashed at her, his eyes on her finger and the tip of her tongue, providing her with the distraction that she had been going for. Clary felt her strength gathering inside her as she threw herself at Jace and he was sent stumbling backwards, caught off guard. She could sense the exact moment that he regained control, but rather than fighting back, he let them go down, and he stayed underneath her, taking the brunt off the fall. He let out a heavy grunt as he landed, Clary on top of him, and she locked her legs on either side of him, knees pressed to his hips and hands heavy on his shoulders.

"I let you have that one," Jace smirked up at her. She knew he was telling the truth, but she just rolled her eyes at him.

"Either way, you're the one that's pinned," Clary retorted. Jace raised a cocky eyebrow at her and then with barely any effort, he threw her off, twisting their bodies tightly so that their positions were switched, Clary underneath and Jace on top. Clary was strong—just like any other werewolf—but Jace was an Alpha, and he was biologically stronger and able to draw more strength from the rest of their pack as well.

"You want to rethink that statement?" Jace grinned down at her and she was tempted to roll her eyes again, but then Jace lunged down, bringing their mouths together so hard that their teeth clicked together. Clary responded in kind, pressing her tongue past his lips and into his mouth. They pushed at each other, pulling at one anothers clothes as their claws began to extend from their fingertips. Jace pinned Clary's arms above her head as she tried to fight against him for control, pulling out to huff out a cocky and unfairly attractive laugh against her lips as she struggled underneath him.

"Asshole," Clary bit out at him, letting her fangs drop and nipping at his lip, drawing blood.

"Be nice, little beta," he teased her back, his voice gently chiding her and just fueling the competitive swirl in the pit of her stomach. She looped her legs around his own, attempting to twist them around before Jace's head buried itself in her neck and she could feel his fangs dangerously scraping over her carotid artery and then her jugular and a shiver ran through her, even though she knew that Jace would never hurt her like that. He used to refuse to fight with her in their practice sessions because he didn't want to hurt her, but Clary was stronger than almost everyone else in the pack and she got damn annoyed when he acted as though she was breakable. So he trained with her, and even though he kept her on her toes and forced her to up her game, he never gave it his all, never wanting to hurt her more than she could handle.

" _Alpha_..." Clary hissed out as his lips closed around a sensitive spot underneath her ear, sucking hard, the tips of his fangs nipping at her skin. She arched her back, pushing her breasts up so they were pressed to his chest. Jace let go of her hand and began to slip one hand down her back, edging past the straps of her sports bra and towards the thick band at the top of her leggings. The hand that had been released from Jace's grip dropped to his shoulder, claws digging into the muscle there.

The pair of them abruptly pulled apart as they heard footsteps approaching and then there was a shout.

"You're disgusting!" Isabelle Lightwood shouted from outside the abandoned warehouse. Any normal human would be able to faintly hear Isabelle from inside, but with their supernatural hearing they could very clearly hear her. "I can smell your horniness from out here so there's no way I'm coming in!" Jace let out a laugh as he dropped his head to rest on Clary's shoulder, the red head grinning as well. "But Magnus wanted me to tell you guys that dinner is ready and he'll kick your ass if you let his famous lasagna go cold!" Jace laughed again and they listened as her footsteps faded away. They lay there for a few more moments before Jace rolled off Clary, getting to his feet and bouncing lightly before reaching out a hand to help Clary to her feet.

"Ready to go?" He asked her. Clary eyed him for a moment before taking off at a run, leaving him to grin and then chase after her.

 **Heya, lovelies. Hope you enjoyed it. Be safe and kind.**


	24. W: White Flag

**Hey, guys :) I just want to apologize if I haven't replied to your reviews for previous chapters yet! I love replying to them individually but I also really wanted to update this week, so I will get through all of them together! xx**

 **W : _White Flag_ \- Bishop Briggs**  
 **Requested by _Jling_**

 _Smoke, fire, it's all going up_  
 _Don't you know I ain't afraid to shed a little blood_  
 _Smoke, fire, flares are going up, flares are going up_

 _Oh, won't wave my white flag, no_  
 _This time I won't let go_  
 _I'd rather die_  
 _Than give up the fight, give up the fight_  
 _Give up the fight, give up the fight_  
 _Won't wave my white flag, no_  
 _Oh, I won't go down slow_  
 _I'd rather die_  
 _Than give up the fight, give up the fight_  
 _Give up the fight, give up the fight_  
 _Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa_  
 _Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa_

Clarissa Morgenstern pursed her lips together as she looked to her side. Alexander Lightwood and Maia Roberts were standing there, both of them with similar, steely expressions on their faces. She looked to her left and Isabelle Lightwood was there, her fingers twitching at her side, little purple sparks flickering around her hands. They had another four people further back, a bit of a safer distance from the building—including the third Lightwood sibling and also Clary's mother.

They were all poised, bodies tensed and ready for the signal.

It didn't take long before it came.

A massive explosion at the front of the building; two of the black SUV's that were parked outside the building exploded, pieces of twisted metal flying into the air as they were suddenly consumed in flames.

"Go!" Clary hissed, and the four of them surged forward. Clary was leading the way, Maia behind her, then Isabelle and Alec bringing up the rear as they slipped through the hole in the wire fence that they had created and running toward the compound. The guards would all be distracted by the explosion that was created by Simon Lewis' mutant hands, but that was only going to be temporary, so they needed to make sure they kept moving. They reached one of the service doors, and Isabelle moved forward, placing her hand over the card reader. There was a quiet hum and then a pop, and the door clicked open—Isabelle's mutation allowing her to short circuit almost any type of electronics.

"Come on," Alec grunted as he reached past them to grab the handle of the door, holding it open as the three woman slipped past him and into the building. They had studied the blue prints for the place for the past few weeks, to the point where they knew it like the back of their hand, and they quickly made their way down the hallway. Almost everything was concrete and glass and there were security cameras around every corner. Clary's fingers were flicking toward them, grasping onto the metal in the little cameras and twisting them to the side since it would draw less attention to just shift their view than Isabelle shorting them all out, but just like the explosion, it would only buy them a short amount of time.

Their first problem came when they opened a door that would lead them to the hallway alongside the part of the building where the holding cells were. They had been focusing more on speed than silence, and as the door opened, it alerted two guards at the end of the hall. There were shouts and then both men lifted up their guns. They were wearing bulletproof vests and the same uniform that the other Circle members were in, and they had a thin metal band wrapped around the backs of their heads and pressing against their ears—a device made by some high-tech companies to protect people from telepaths.

"Stop where you are!" The first guard shouted.

"Put your hands up!" The second guard added, the two of them advancing of the group of four. The four didn't falter, continuing their approach, and that was when the guards started firing at them. Clary threw herself in front of the group, her hands coming upward, palms out, and stopping the bullets as they sliced through the air toward the group.

"Alec! The wall!" Clary shouted over the sound of the machine guns firing and the shouting coming from the guards. They were yelling for back up, and the more that came, the harder it was going to be for them to get out. Alec moved quickly, toward the thick concrete wall to their left, and put his hands to the wall. Another two guards came around the corner, and then Maia's head tipped to the side, ears pricked.

"We've got two coming from behind!" Maia shouted and her and Isabelle turned around, covering Clary's back. With a flick of Clary's fingers, she jerked the guns from the guards hands, the metal attracted to her, and she sent them smashing against the ground, falling down with all of the harmless bullets that she had stopped and that were now littering the floor. Isabelle had her hands raised in a defensive position while Maia twisted her neck, rolling her shoulders, and then with a few loud, wet pops and there was a wolf standing where Maia had been, her clothes ripped and useless on the ground. She growled and showed her teeth, waiting for the guards to come through the door that they just run through.

"Come on, Alec!" Isabelle urged, knowing that it was just a matter of time. Maia had been the first one to hear about the two coming, given her hearing because of her werewolf abilities, but even the other three could hear the shouting between guards and the pounding of feet on concrete floors. Alec didn't say anything, his complete concentration on the wall. His knuckles were almost white from how hard he was pressing against the concrete wall. Suddenly, splits and cracks forced themselves through the wall. There were little puffs of concrete dust as the cracks broke through the thick concrete.

"Maia!" Clary cried out warningly as the two guards came through the door. Everything moved quickly from that point forward—even quicker than things had been moving before. Clary jerked the guns from their hands before they could even begin shooting and then Maia was lunging forward. Clary pulled more guns from them, as well as the knives that they had strapped to their ankles. Maia tore at their clothes, ripping at their arms and torsos, slashing through their clothes with her fangs and claws.

She wasn't going to kill them, not unless she was forced, but she wasn't going easy on them either.

"Step back!" Alec shouted, still standing against the wall, which was quickly crumbling. Isabelle and Clary flattened themselves against the opposite wall as the concrete all of a sudden began falling down, until there was a huge gap in the wall. On the other side, dressed in hideous grey and orange jumpsuits that the Circle put all of their prisoners in, were about fifteen mutants.

The four didn't recognize all of them, but they were here to save them all.

 _Especially_ Jace Herondale and Magnus Bane.

"Alexander!" Came a gasp from the far side, a handsome Indonesian man who just didn't look himself with his hair hanging limply without any gel and his face scrubbed bare, not a hint of glitter or eyeliner. He was holding a little girl close to his side, with caramel coloured skinned and black hair. She could only be four or five years old.

"Magnus!" Alec sprinted across the room, rushing to hold his boyfriend close and burying his face in his side.

"We don't have time for this," Clary's voice was clipped as she tried to keep herself in control of her emotions. She was one of the leaders of the Resistance, and even though her eyes had been drawn to Jace the moment the wall had fallen, she couldn't let herself forget that they were in the middle of a highly secured compound run by a vicious man who had dedicated his life to wiping out all mutants— _her_ people. "We need to get out of here."

"Get this off me," Jace growled out as he came over to her. All of the mutants who were in the uniform were wearing thick metal collars with a flashing red light and Clary hated the fact her husband was _collared like an animal_. They were inhibitors, they stopped the mutants from being able to use their powers. Clary nodded and jerked her head at Isabelle, who was standing next to a couple of other mutants, quickly disabling their collars. They could get them off later, it required a bit more finesse than what Clary was ready to do in the middle of a warzone, right now they just needed them disabled.

"Hold still," Isabelle murmured, putting her fingers to the collar. There was a snap and a hum and the light flickered off.

"Maia!" Clary shouted over her shoulder as Jace rolled his shoulders, feeling his powers running through, surging through his limbs after being pushed down for nearly a month. Clary saw his golden eyes flash as the powers came back, and she wanted to kiss him with relief, at the fact he was still alive, that he was _okay_ , but that was for later.

"Everyone get close!" Jace shouted and the mutants all gathered around him, even the ones that Clary didn't recognize. Obviously, Jace had shared what his mutation was, and they trusted him to keep them safe. Maia came charging through the gap in the wall, blood dripping from her mouth. There was the sound of so many bullets being fired, and shouts from countless guards, all of them getting closer and closer. Clary took in a deep breath and ducked her head as Jace's powers grew around them. There was a golden shimmer around them, encompassing all of them, as Jace's powers began to flex and expand.

Just as the guards came around the corner, coming through the jagged hole in the concrete that Alec had created, Jace's powers exploded.

There was a forcefield around the mutants, keeping them safe, as the golden shimmer around them suddenly exploded outward. It sent the guards flying backward and it continued throughout the entire building. Anyone in the compound would have been affected, although obviously the ones closer to the blast would have been worse off. The concrete walls shuddered, the glass of the thick, bulletproof windows shattered and before any of the Circle members had a chance to retaliate, Clary was charging forward, knowing that the others would be at her back.

They didn't run into any guards who were able to function on their way out.

A couple of the mutants—the ones who looked more pale and gaunt than the others, so obviously had been there for longer—lashed out at some of the incapacitated guards, kicking them as they ran past. Clary knew they wanted revenge, but now wasn't the time.

That would come later.

Clary lead the way, and she trusted that Alec and Jace would be at the back, ensuring that everyone was staying together.

They got out of the compound the same way that they had come in, out the side door and then sprinting the short distance to the wire fence and then slipping through. Clary didn't look back, they didn't have time for that, so she just kept on running. They needed to get to their rendezvous point where Jocelyn Fairchild, Max Lightwood, Jordan Kyle and Lydia Branwell were waiting. Simon was there as well, and Clary felt a little bit of tension leave her stomach as well, knowing that Simon got there safely as well.

"Open a portal!" Clary shouted out to them as they approached, and she shoved at the branches of trees to get to the road where their five friends were. Max jerked his head in a nod as she broke through the last of the trees and came out onto the road. She could hear the rustle and snap of branches behind her as the rest of the mutants followed her. Behind them, though, a lot further back but _getting closer_ were shouts from the guards and even a few scattered gunshots.

Clary's heart was pounding in her chest as the mutants that they had just released all gathered around her, waiting as Max's fingers came together, blue sparks flying. The younger boy took in a deep breath as he slowly spread his fingers outward, and a portal was created. He widened his arms until they were far apart and there was a portal wide enough for someone to run through, opening to the underground warehouse that they were living in. On the other side there were other people waiting, watching with wide eyes as they waited for their friends to get back.

"Go, go, go!" Clary ushered the mutants around her through the portal.

"Come on," Jocelyn urged some of the younger mutants that they had saved, ones who they had never seen before looking a little nervous. But they had to keep moving, because the guards were getting closer. Magnus gave Clary a wide smile as he passed by her, carrying the little girl tightly in her arms. Jocelyn and Simon charged through the portal after the mutants they had rescued, quickly followed by Lydia, Alec, Isabelle and Maia, who was still in wolf form. Clary was the only one still on the road, and Max, who was holding the portal open.

"Let's go," Max said, sounding a little breathless. Jace reached an arm through the portal, from where he was safely on the other side, looping his fingers around her wrist and tugging. Just as Clary was about to step through the portal, the guards crashed through the trees...

Lead by a very familiar face.

Valentine Morgenstern's lip was curled in a snarl as he saw his daughter—a _mutant_ , just like the vermin he was trying to exterminate—and she smirked at him, although her eyes were just as cold as his.

Clary lifted the hand that Jace wasn't holding, pulling the fingers at her father, before stepping through the portal and dragging Max behind her. She could hear the clicks of the guns as the guards rose their weapons, but Max let the portal close instantly behind them, and they were safe, back in their hide out.

That was when she let herself slump against Jace and her husband held her tightly.

For now, they were safe, and they needed to celebrate that, to make sure that they were all okay and ready to fight.

Because tomorrow, their war would continue.

 **Let me know what you think x**


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